Hi All, my wonderful farmer who custom bales for me would like me to move to using those bales. I did search, but didn’t come up w an answer to my question. We are not, in any way, shape or form, set up to use these bales. Does anyone have an innovative idea for these? Our hay is stored in one barn, mostly overhead, and the horses are in another barn. Using a tractor and a wagon is impractical. We feed a lot of hay and store 10 small bales in the barn w the horses at a time. A skid steer couldn’t get in where we store the small bales. Thanks in advance for any ideas. NH
I use these bales as my primary source of hay. In the past I have used small squares, small squares to supplement round bales and now I’m only using the XL square bales (3x3x7).
I don’t have a building to store the XL squares in at the moment. I’m hoping to get a Carolina carport structure up this summer. Until then, I have the bales on pallets covered by 2 tarps.
I have an XL, 2 wheeled, wheel barrow that I can load flakes of the hay into (8) and tie them down and move them into my feed room. I also have a UTV that has a bed on it that is slightly wider than the flakes. I can stack around 14 flakes on the back of that and back up to my feed room door to store. I usually move a weeks worth of hay into my feed room (14 flakes). The flakes I have are fairly easy to divide into sections. I can put 1/3 of a flake into a stall (loose and fluffed) to occupy the horses if I need them in. If it’s rainy and/or muddy, like it is will be for the next week or so here, I lock them in the sacrifice lot and feed them with an extended day hay net. I can fit 1-1 1/2 flakes of hay in a net. If it is dry, I break the flakes up into sections and feed them in piles out in the pasture. To take the flakes out into the field, I use my XL wheel barrow.
The cost savings, ease of use and the ability to control waste is what led me to use the XL square bales. I’d be paying 2-3 times as much for small square bales. I would have more waste with rounds unless I unwound them, and that is not what I consider ease of use.
If you have a way to stack them on the ground, you can easily open a bale and pull flakes as long as they are not stacked higher than 2 high. I find that they behave similar to the small squares that are super compressed. When you cut the strings, the bale tends to stay together. You can pull 1-4 flakes away and the rest will stay in place. After I have pulled the hay I want to move into the barn, I retie the bale so that my barn cat doesn’t cause other flakes to come off the open bale.
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Thank you! You make it sound doable!
They have flakes just like a small square bale does. If the farmer can get them stacked in the barn for you it is just a matter of transporting the large flakes you take off the bales to feed.
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The flakes are enormous and very heavy. We ended up making a bloody mess of the aisle separating the giant flakes out into feeding portions, and God help you if the flake didn’t just neatly fall off.
I would only allow it if there was a good cost savings.
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The bale he brought us to try was exactly as enjoy the ride described. It was beautiful hay but we couldn’t get it pulled apart. He did say he can pack them less tightly for us. I think I’d need to buy another piece of equipment to do this efficiently. I don’t know what that would be and it’d take forever to rationalize that expense against the cost savings. That said, I’d still like to know how others are managing. I do know someone who tried to cut one up w a chain saw-epic fail 😳.
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We’re having the same problem with the round bales we put up last year. It was our first time using a new baler and the bales got so big and heavy and tight that we were having trouble getting the hay off them. So now when we bring them up we take the strings off and use the grapple on the tractor to pull them apart. I know that not everyone has a grapple, but I think if there’s a tractor or other equipment around that might be the answer, because a pitchfork isn’t.
I used those large squares when we were in the Midwest, and they were great. One flake was about = to four small bale flakes, and one flake would fit in a 50" shires hay net. The bales were delivered by the hay guy with a skid steer, and he unloaded and stacked two high. We had all ground level storage. I had no problem taking the flakes I needed every day and moving them around in a Rubbermaid yard cart, but our small tractor (JD 2320) could move single bales at a time, using hay forks.
If I had ground level storage here (or space to build) I’d love to use big bales. Smalls are so $$$$$ and labor intensive to stack.
If your bales aren’t flaking, there’s something amiss in how they’re being baled?
I’ve been using 3x4x8 bales since December and I can’t wait for hay season to begin so I can use small squares again. My experience is 100% opposite of Jawa’s. (I do think 3x3 bales would be easier.) I opened the first bale and it exploded. The flakes fall apart easily. I can sometimes pull off a third or half a flake somewhat intact. I weighed a flake and got 25 lbs, so have been trying to feed about a flake to my 3 horses per feeding.
I thought before opening bale #2. I cut it string by string and tied them back together with an extra piece of twine, so the explosion was contained. Put something heavy on one end of the bale and a tarp at the other. I deliberately only let a few flakes fall off and retied some of the strings. It is going to be interesting when I need to open the bales in my loft. :eek:
I had seen the people feeding at my previous boarding barn struggling to separate flakes off large bales, so obviously it depends how tightly it was baled. I thought when I got my bales I could separate them to stack flakes on top of intact bales, but no way. Or take some flakes off the end to put most of a bale in my shed (not quite deep enough.) Other interesting thing is, my bales are very dusty with a light dust. Shake it out and it’s very edible. Any idea what causes this dust? If it was from a dusty road I’d think it would be heavier dust.
I know some folks put a ratchet strap around the bales before cutting the strings, then they loosen it to take out flakes and tighten up the strap again. I’ve seriously considered them to save money, but my hay guy doesn’t bring them in as there’s no demand.
I get these for my ponies who live out. I can only get one large bale at a time as at this time I don’t have a spear. I back the truck up the barn, cut the strings and hubby and i move it 4-5 flakes at a time to a little trailer I have in the barn. It works but it takes two people unless you want to make an epic mess as the flakes come apart. I take 3-5 flakes at a time and put them in a water tub hay feeder covered in a net. It lasts 3 ponies 3-4 days depending. The bale usually lasts 3-4 weeks but they have been burning some hay lately so I’m not sure this one will make it a month.
I was thinking next time around I may try to tie a ratchet strap to it and tie it off to the barn roof support and gently pull it off. Which I can execute alone.
when I was feeding these I would get one at a time in our pickup which had an eight foot bed. We have a storage shed where I could put down two pallets, then back over the pallets … next was to wrap a rope around the bale, then tie it off. Next move was to pull truck out, bale slid off to rest on the pallets
The problem with him packing the bales less tight is you lose money because you’re paying by the bale and not the pound. At the time we used them we couldn’t get small squares.
This seems like the biggest issue of you switching over from small squares to large squares. Your current hay storage will not work. Is this farmer willing to store the hay for you at no additional cost? (Which I would not expect, but heck, worth asking.)
I have thought about these- for the value only- but, I am not set up for them. That means that I would have to make an arrangement for them outside, on pallets, and under tarps. And, I am afraid it would simply be a mess.
I mostly feed my hay in hay racks outside, so breaking off part of the bale, and taking it out in the Gator, and then moving into the rack seems fairly cumbersome- and daunting. Right now, I put three small squares into one hay rack, and six in the other.
Having all of the excess hay accumulate around the bales outside is something you’d have to clean up on the regular. If it snows, or is raining when I need to take hay out, there are more issues.
If I could find a way to do it that didn’t seem like a whole lot more work- and, our time IS money, I might try it. If this more labor and handling, along with waste, and not an appreciable savings by the bale- forget about it for me!
Enjoy the ride, that is an excellent point that I hadn’t even thought of😳. Thank you. Everyone, thank you for your ideas. And, autocorrect will not let me type your name without spaces😀.
If you couldn’t get the flakes of hay to separate from the main bale, then they were baled very tightly, similar to the compressed baled hay. If the hay guy were to back off on how tightly the bales are made, if would be less of an issue. If he makes them too loose, the hay won’t stay in a flake.
Another thing I have found that affects the flake is the consistency of the hay. Stalky hay packs differently than a finer stem hay or leafy hay.
The flakes from the bales I have are pretty easy to “fold” and crease to create an easy way to pull them apart.
If I had to use 6 or more flakes a day, I’d want to be working out of a hay shed, not with the pallet/ tarp arrangement I have at the moment. I go through around 14 flakes a week. I pull the flakes 2-3 at a time from the main bale and stack them on the bed of the cart and move them to my hay room where I stack them on a pallet.
I have 2 extended day hay nets (3’x4’) that I have hanging under the lean to of the barn. I have the back part of the net attached to a dowel rod. I have 4 carabiner snaps that I use to close the net. In order to fill the net, I fold the flake in hay and place it in the net while it is still hanging from the fence. I then close the top, ensuring that the net closes like an envelope. I have a short, oval water tub attached to the fence just under the net. This catches any chaff that may fall and helps to keep the waste down. It also gives me a bit of insurance that the horses aren’t going to get a shoe caught in the net.
The weight of the bales if they are baled a little looser is no different than with small square bales. I’ve purchased some small squares that were closer to 60-70lbs for the same price as others were selling bales that weighed 30. You need to get an idea of the average weight of a bale and then do your cost comparison.
It is definitely not for everyone, especially if you have storage and equipment issues. I find them easier to feed measured quantities from than round bales, but with the same cost efficiency of rounds.
From the hay guys perspective, he can store the bales easier than rounds and he doesn’t have the need to pay help to pick up and stack hay, or buy a hay accumulator or a hay bundler.
We fed and LOVED them when we lived in Ok and here in Texas…but we had a huge hay barn to store them in and a tractor to move them…I MUCH prefer them over round bales - not fed free choice, but delivered to the stalls in a wheel barrow!! One hint I have for newbies to the big squares…place the bale at right angles to a solid object/wall …tie a rope to the wall/post with a hay hook at the end far from the wall. Firmly anchor the hay hook to a spot two or three flakes from the end you are opening. The bale will act like sliced bread and the rope will keep the WHOLE “loaf” from falling forward and will make life a whole lot easier!! Each flake is about as heavy as a small bale of hay!!
Thank you, Crosscreeksh- that is a good idea.
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A solution learned from experience!!!
