i live in the hot, humid South. I currently have a 3 sided, wood floor structure for my hay. My hay molds constantly. In the summer I can only buy 2 to 3 weeks ahead, in the dead of winter I can go a month.
So, what would be better? I’m thinking center aisle barn. Would a concrete floor be better? Open to aisle or 4 walls? Add fans? Dehumidifier? Any tips appreciated.
Do you stack in direct contact with your wood floor?
IIWM, I’d try a double layer of pallets to aerate between floor & bales.
I am in the Midwest, but Summers can get darned humid - my barn (center-aisle) has compacted stonedust floors & I store hay on a single layer of wood pallets. No walls in the hay storage area aside from the barn walls at one end & one side.
I have yet to lose a bottommost bale to mold - despite the fact that “something” has tunneled beneath the pallets so that in heavy rains I get a little stream running from beneath one end.
Concrete can keep humidity from dissipating & will sweat as it stays cooler than surrounding air.
I believe the compacted stonedust allows for moisture to evaporate.
It floors my stalls too & I do not have mats, nor do I ever have ammonia buildup - even in the stall my pony has a Designated Pee Spot he uses Every.Single.Time.
Hay is stacked on pallets that are on top of the wood floor.
So far my best results in both VA and Indiana is hay in the hay lofts or in the hay shed that has a wooden floor about 2 feet above the ground. I have a LOT of airflow. My barn now is open on at least one side nearly all year. However, I can’t stack bales on the mats on top of the concrete floors for more than about 2 days or it gets funky, so I pull down bales and store them in a gorilla cart for feeding. I am eventually relocating to SC and am wondering myself about storage.
I am thinking possibly a shipping container with a fan?You can buy those solar ventilation fans and I was wondering if a few of them would help with keeping the air moving.
So I’m actually putting an addition on my barn of three more stalls so the current 3 stalls can become hay storage. Right now the ground is dirt and I know it will become rodent infested if we leave it dirt (we already have issues with rodents digging tunnels). My husband wanted to pour in concrete. But can we make a wood floor instead? Seems like it would be a lot cheaper. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of rodents chewing through a wood floor?
Rodents can and will chew through wood. At my prior farm, mice chewed through a wood floor and cabinets in a tack room.
We have a 3 sided hay barn (basically a run in shed, 12x36) on a concrete pad that has a vapor barrier. Hay is stacked on wood pallets. I usually assume we will lose the bottom bales unless the hay is used within a couple of months, but fortunately we don’t need to store much more than that at any given time.
I bought a Graceland building.
I like that brand better than the other pre-fab buildings because there is ventilation built in where the walls meet the ceiling and along the spine of the roof. Mine also has screened windows I can leave open a crack. I bought the kind with lofts so I can also use it to store things like Christmas decorations and other stuff I don’t have room for in the house.
Before that, I had to buy only what I could stack on my semi-enclosed back porch.
I tried storing hay outside one time, on pallets with a plastic shelter, and it was smoking within a week!
I wouldn’t want to store hay in the actual barn with the horses around here. Too much risk of fire, IMO
I am also in the south, and find the best place to store the hay is in my loft. The loft isn’t fully enclosed. It’s open on the west end, under the bonnet, open to the stalls below on entire north side (it’s a 3/4 loft), and a small opening on the east end. LOTS of air flow. I do still stack on pallets. Never loose a bale.
Check with your insurance company. Will they insure a barn where hay is stored?
That’s a great question. I will check.
Chiming in from also hot/humid NC here…
We also use a 3-sided wood structure for hay storage. We have concrete floor, then tarps on top of that, then a single layer of pallets. We’ve had zero issues with hay molding and have 6 months or more stored in there at a time. Maybe it’s not the floor that’s your issue, but the open side? We have ceiling to ground canvas curtains hung. there’s plenty of air circulation that way, but it keeps hay protected from direct sun and most of wind-blown rain. It might be worth looking at how much moisture in getting in on that side.
I like having the hay in a separate storage building near, but not attached/over the horse stalls. Not just for fire concerns, but also dust.
For about a year we leased a small center-aisle barn with a hayloft and I hated it. There was no good way to get hay down without dropping it through a hatch, and it would bounce around on the floor and spread dust and chaff everywhere–very messy. I do think it made the barn dustier as well.
Another issue with the loft, we found it harder to purchase hay. The feed store could do it, bringing their hay elevator, but it cost an extra $40/ton. The smaller farmers who have more affordable hay didn’t have their own elevators so we were not able to buy less expensive hay the whole time we lived there.
I live in the midwest and it can get pretty humid. My hay barn is open on the north side with gates and has roof vents. Floor is crust limestone with a heavy tarp that used to cover my haystack pre-barn and pallets. I get all my hay for year at once (usually 20-25 ton) and have never in 5 years had any mold or other problems.
It is likely that your hay was not professionally put up. I live in East TN and we get 50 inches of rain per annum (more or less; this year more) and only time I’ve seen mold problems is when wet hay is stacked badly. Sometimes it’s baled with too much moisture, sometimes it gets wet in the field, sometimes it’s kept in un-ventilated conditions, sometimes it’s something else. But it’s almost always a problem of handling or storage.
Wet hay is dangerous as the curing process can generate a LOT of heat and hay fires are sadly common. So you want properly cured and handled hay in a well ventilated space, off the ground (both natural ground or concrete or other surfaces), and stacked such that air can circulate around the bales. This means no tarps on the hay. If you must tarp to protect against birds (like barn swallows) then keep the tarp well off the hay so that you don’t impair air circulation.
In cold climates hay lofts make a lot of sense as they provide insulation in cold weather. In the South, where heat is the enemy, I’d not have one. When we commercially boarded I had an old barn with a loft and we brought in a 2-3 day supply into the horse barn and put it into a utility area (well ventilated). I was very careful who I bought my hay from. From time to time a bale or two might mold, but that was a rare occurrence.
I’d start by looking for a new hay supplier while I reviewed my storage practices.
G.
I have gotten my hay from multiple suppliers, all with the same result. So, my storage must somehow be the issue. So frustrating.
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