How much hay will fit?

[Lexibrooke1]

I’m in the process of getting my farm together so my mom and I can get two horses. Though I don’t have the exact measurements of our hay storage area, my mom estimates it to be 12 X 12 and the listing for the house says its 150 sq ft. The ceiling is also at an incline. So, not very large. I’m trying to figure out how much hay will fit. I want to get enough to last the winter but I don’t think that much will fit. I have a guy delivering 100 square bales this weekend, I’m not sure if that will be too much or if I’ll still have room. Another seller told me he can fit 100 bales in a 10 x 10 area but that sounds a little crazy. Does anyone have any idea how much hay I’d be able to store? I have attached a photo from the house listing that shows some hay that the previous owner had in the area for reference. Thanks!

[2DogsFarm]

This is my TWH playing Hay Jenga with about 1/2 the 300 small squares I have stacked on pallets inside my barn.
Space that holds the whole 300 is 12’ Deep X 24’ Long X 10’ High
The 300 last me all year for my 3: TWH, Hackney Pony & mini.
I buy 1st cutting & generally have a few dozen bales left when the next year’s hay is ready to bale.

[Lexibrooke1]

@2DogsFarm Okay now I’m feeling a little better about my space. We should have enough room. Thanks for your feedback. Your horse is adorable btw.

[goodhors]

I would think you can get 100 bales in there, but that you will need more than 100 bales for winter. Do you have any extra stalls or garage space? The extra might be able to be stored there. I got way more than 100 bales in a 12x 12 stall, but it had an open top, so we put up the hay elevator and dropped them behind the front wall, to stack high. Wrestling them into a closed space and stacking, will be more difficult. Here, I am seeing the frame carports with tarp covers or metal roof (with tarp sides to keep out weather), used as hay storage areas. Some put stall mats and/or plastic tarps on the dirt floor to stop or slow moisture from the ground getting up in the bales. They put pallets on the plastic to stack bales on. You may lose some lowest bales to mold, but still have good bales above.

When I had smaller (easy keepers) western, 14.2H horses, I figured half a bale each per day. So the 2 of them ate one whole bale a day. 100 bales is slightly more than 3 months worth. Not sure what kind of horses you plan to have. Bigger horses usually need more hay a day, than smaller horses. Hay is what heats the horse in cold weather, by fermenting in the gut, creating heat. Adding grain does not warm them like extra hay will. Not sure of your winter cold temps, but cold below 20F, means ours get a bit more hay each day, as long as they clean it up pretty well.

I want all my winter hay in the barn so we do not have to deal with bad weather when getting more. Could be deep snow, ice, rain, general bad conditions to try reaching a storage barn to fill the truck, then drive home with a big load of hay. Here in Michigan it can get very ugly in winter, you do not want to be out getting hay home on slippery roads. Buying all your supply at once, now if possible, horses eat the same hay all winter and you will probably get it slightly cheaper. People buying in mid winter can be paying a lot for junk hay, because they have run out. HAVE to buy what they can find.

If you are not set on buying specific breed horses, you might consider gaited breeds for general fun riding. Most are easy to live with, extremely comfortable to ride for long times and can be very easy keepers. Older local trail riders like shorter ones, for being easier to get on. They have no true trot, so not eligible for most shows, but showing may not interest you and your Mom.

[Lexibrooke1]

@goodhors We do plan on getting smaller horses, but I was hoping to get at least 150 bales. I just don’t want to order how much I think we’ll need and it end up not fitting. I don’t know how big the bales are that this guy is bringing, I just said 100 because I’m pretty sure that much will fit, and we can always buy more if we have more room. I do worry that its not going to hold enough for the winter. We do have a large garage but my stepdad is hardheaded and he’s not gonna want stacks of hay near his vehicles. Our barn is small with only two stalls so that’s not really an option either. I guess we’ll see how it goes.

[Obsidian_Fire]

Do some math. Plan on 20#/day per horse. That’s 600 lbs/month for ONE horse. Times 12 mos = 7200 lbs, or 3.6 tons per horse, for one year. 2 horses, double that.
How heavy are your bales? Let’s pretend they are 100# each. 7200/100 = 72 bales for one horse.

So yes, 150 bales “should be” enough hay for 2 horses BUT it depends on how much they actually weigh. 150 bales of my locally grown grass hay that average maybe 60# each would have me running out of hay long before a new crop is cut.

[Scribbler]

Around here square bales typically weigh either in the 5O lb range or the 110lb range. The smaller ones have two strings and the larger ones have three strings. Typically the smaller bales come from small local farmers and the three string bales from bigger commercial growers in a different climate area.

So the big question is really how many bales to a ton, and then how much does a ton cost?

I have an 11 by 11 loft that does double duty as hay storage, feed room, and tack storage. I can only use maximum a little over half for hay. I can get one and a half tons of three string Timothy in there. The front half of the loft is higher like yours but obviously that’s not where I store my hay, it has to go at the back. I would think if I only used it for hay storage I could cram 3 tons in there.

[2DogsFarm]

@goodhors has good advice!
Getting your year’s worth before bad weather raises prices & makes getting decent hay difficult, if not impossible makes for peace of mind.

If Delaware Winters get even near as nasty as Midwest (can we say: Polar Vortex?) you might not be able to transport hay or even have it delivered.

When pastures are dead for the season, I also toss out a flake per horse besides what’s in stalls, so they can “graze”.
Horses have free access to stalls 24/7/365, but even when there is hay in stalls & it is frigid outside, they prefer Out over In.

Would stepdad object to bales stacked & tarped to keep down fines?
Impossible to keep the area totally free of hay debris, but you can cut it down.

& :tickled_pink: Thanks, Hay De-Stacker is a sweetheart… When he’s not making busywork for me :rolleyes:

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[Scribbler]

Just jumped over to my calculator. Three tons is 120 of the 5O lb bales or 56 of the 110 lb bales.

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[Scribbler]

I also second the idea of looking for horses that are naturally easy keepers. My 16 hand Paint is on a permanent diet of 15lbs of hay a day, or she will get obese. On the other hand, I’ve seen OTTB and Warmbloods put away 30 lbs of hay a day and still look a little weedy.
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You do need to make sure the easy keepers don’t get too fat as that brings on a host of metabolic and hoof problems that can be life threatening. And they will still need a good all around vitamin mineral supplement or ration balancer. They probably won’t need grain.

The stock horse breeds tend to be easy keepers.

[Texarkana]

I’m a stone’s throw from Delaware. Getting hay delivery in the winter is generally not a problem. I purchase my hay from a seller in Delaware and I usually have to receive a mid-winter delivery due to storage constraints. I store my hay in a 10x10 stall and purchase 100 bales at a time, which do not all fit in the space. Of course, I forget the exact number that do fit-- maybe 60ish IIRC? I end splitting the rest between another stall and the aisle.

This topic reminds me of the time I was arguing with my high school calculus teacher how I would never use calculus because I was going to be a famous, Olympic horse trainer. He told me one day I’d need to figure out how many bales of hay I could fit in a space and would want to write some sort of function to figure it out. I was sure no such situation would ever occur. Dammit. :lol:

[Lexibrooke1]

Thank you all for your comments and for doing the math. I know of a couple different suppliers around here and I’m going to purchase as much as I can fit. I know one said her bales are about 45lbs each, but I’m not sure how the big the bales are from the guy delivering this weekend. I’ll definitely get up with him before the poor soul stacks 100 on a trailer just to find out they don’t fit in our storage.

@2DogsFarm I’ll probably end up having to fuss with my stepdad about it because whether he likes it or not he agreed to having horses on the property when he bought it so in turn he needs to agree to do whats right by them, even if it means some of his ‘precious garage space’ needs to be used. Worse case scenario there is a guy that sells it commercially year-round but for exponentially high prices. Buying from him would be a last resort should we run out mid-winter. Also, I am in the market for a pony and I know a lot of them get fat off air so that may help.

@Texarkana I was just joking to myself earlier about how I used to think that I’d never need to know all the math I learned in high school. Now I’m over here trying to calculate pounds and tons and square feet. I suppose my math teachers would be getting the last laugh now.

[fourfillies]

I can get 18 45ish pound small squares in a 4x8 area stacked 8’ tall. I’m a good, not great stacker. Extrapolating that I’d wager you’ll have about 15-20 that won’t fit. Good luck. No better feeling than a barn full of hay!

[wildlifer]

My experience has been that it can depend on who stacks it, LOL. It also depends on how consistent the bale size is. It’s better to under-guess at first, you’ll have a better idea after that. If you are already feeding hay when you get the delivery, it’s also an option to throw any extras on a separate pallet with a tarp & you can feed those out first so they don’t sit there long.

Also, I have found that a number of hay suppliers will hold part of your order for you, especially if they are producing it. Paying in cash can help make them happy to do this too. I’ve not had a problem getting additional hay mid-winter either. It may not be as cheap as it was in July, but again, depends on the supplier. I have just not found it practical to try & cram in my entire winter supply (about 150-ish bales), I end up stressing more about moisture, especially thru hurricane season. While I’m always on a crazy tight budget, I’m ok with it costing me an extra $40-50 to get a second load in February & lowering my stress level (& the amount of tarp wrangling needed inside the hayshed) significantly.

[wildlifer]

@Lexibrooke1

I was just joking to myself earlier about how I used to think that I’d never need to know all the math I learned in high school. Now I’m over here trying to calculate pounds and tons and square feet. I suppose my math teachers would be getting the last laugh now.

Wanted to add an LOL at this – I also found myself trying to calculate interior volumes & figure out the lengths of triangle axes to include space under eaves – I consider myself reasonably intelligent, but I had to consult one of our engineers at work because my memory was rusty. Fortunately, he has cows, so he was nice about it, haha.

[Jarpur]

We don’t like to stack our hay high, as I am on the short side, but can easily store 100 55# bales in a 12x15 foot space, with space to spare. Can do seven bales across the 12 foot side, instead of the six we usually do, and go higher, if needed to fit more bales. At one time, we had an ex-NFL player/rancher providing our hay; he could stack more bales in our space, but we found getting the first one out of a new row was like pulling the cork out of a bottle of champagne:lol:.

Depending upon how comfortable you are with stacking vertically, you should easily be able to fit 100 bales in your 12 x 12 space. For instance, seven bales across to create three rows of stacks – each row consisting of three stacks of 10 bales each, so five bales in height, plus a single stack of five bales at one side of the row – would be 105 bales.

We usually purchase out of the field, from a producer; when necessary, at his suggestion, we’ve dropped off a flatbed for him to load and store undercover in his barn so that we can pick up a load later. So you might ask your supplier about the possibility of a similar arrangement.

[Lexibrooke1]

@Jarpur @wildlifer I never knew that a supplier saving hay for someone was a thing. Depending on how much we’re able to fit during this initial shipment, I’ll definitely ask him if it’s possible for him to save us a stack to deliver later in the season. If not him, then I know of some other people who may be willing to do this. Good suggestion!

[2DogsFarm]

@Lexibrooke1 Around here it is a Thing to prepay for the total amount of bales & then pick up, or have delivered later.
Arrangement can vary with supplier.

[Christa_P]

I have a 20’ long x 7’ tall and a 7.5’ wide stock trailer that I stack 140 small square bales in. My hay storage area in the barn is about 40’ x 10’ x 10’ and I can stack 700 bales there.