Does anyone have any tips or tools that help move heavy hay bales? I have arthritis in my hands that seems to flare when I move hay from my hay stall up to my smaller hay bin once a week.
Do you have hay hooks? Do you have a dolly or trolley? Can you use two hay hooks to haul the hay onto a dolly and pull it over?
Alternatively you need a young person to help once a week.
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I use a long hay hook to drag bales on the concrete floor for a bit, or a dolly to carry bales of hay here and there.
Cheap dolly just right to move bales:
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Harper-6…AK19/202259413
Cheap extra long hay hook to drag bales around:
https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/product/countyline-extra-long-hay-hook
If you buy your hay from a regular supplier, you could ask if they could make you smaller bales.
I am a young person - I’m in my 20s! :eek: I might just need a healthier young person.
I currently load the hay into my truck, drive it up the hill and unload that, but thats enough to flare my hands for the next couple days. The bed of my truck is pretty small so I have to do a lot of shoving and smashing to squash it all in (or throwing if I wanted to stack) No hay hooks though - I’ve never used them. Are there any brands you recommend?
I didn’t realize my swollen hands were abnormal, so I’ve just been powering through for the last 2 years. I just found out that it was arthritis and now I want to be careful and preserve my hands. Maybe there’s a simple solution here - like only move as many bales as I can comfortably load into my truck without the shoving and smashing. I’m just in brand new territory.
I order hay from a really great hay dealer, so I get what I get. He has high quality hay year round and he delivers and stacks and overall I love them very much. But they don’t bale it themselves so I don’t get any say into bale sizing. Thanks for the idea though!
You perhaps need to reorganize things so that you do not need to do regular moving of this magnitude.
I get 110 lb plus bales of Timothy delivered and stacked in my loft and it stays exactly where the lads from the hay dealer drop it until I toss it down to the horse.
I can shift a 50 lb bale but not 110 lb.
I have no idea what your setup is like but this sounds like all your hay needs to essentially get stacked and loaded twice, one time alone. Thats a crazy amount of extra work. I would reorganize somehow.
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OP given your age I would hire some one else to move the hay
As for those 130# bales we get I use a warehouse two wheel cart to move the things about. Stacking is as though I was building one of those Egyptian pyramids … I hold the whip while some else hoist those things up
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I also have osteoarthritis in my fingers, though I am much older the OP. I figure I want to maximize my saddle time and longevity, so I try to minimize the heavy duty chores that are uneeded wear and tear on my joints.
Get a low trailer, load on the trailer, drive to the other place and unload from the low trailer?
Even if you have to make a couple more trips with less hay, you won’t have to work so hard to load the hay high up and squeezed into the pickup bed.
You may be able to leave the small trailer loaded in the second location until empty?
There are small trailers you can pull with a mower.
Maybe consider a little subcompact tractor with a bucket and/or pallet forks and a pallet you can scoot bales on right off one stack and unload on the other place?
I agree with the suggestion to try to put hay, if safe to do so, where you have to feed it, so it doesn’t has to be handled more than once, at feeding time.
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If you can afford to hire someone to do the “big moving” of hay bales, please do it 
You may have R/A (rheumatoid arthritis). If you don’t have a formal diagnosis please go to a doctor to be sure the type arthritis you have. R/A is debilitating and requires drugs to hold it at bay. My SIL was diagnosed with R/A in her early 20’s. She is an RN in oncology, is about to turn 50 and one would never know, to look at her hands, she has R/A thanks to the great meds that have been developed.
if you’re dealing with osteoarthritis, some things that help me are:
Arthritis gloves – WalGreen carries them. They help me sleep.
Tightly wrapped vet wrap as mine is in my knuckles.
Salonpas with 4% Lidocaine.
DIET! Say no to the soft drinks and sugar.
ditto the hay hooks and dollies. Rule Number One when doing farm work is always find a way to make equipment lower the burden on your body:)
Best wishes and best of luck:)
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Thanks everyone. Right now I have an upper shedrow barn with 2 stalls (at the top of the hill) and a lower shedrow barn that also has 2 stalls (at the bottom of the hill). I use the lower stalls for hay and equipment storage, and the horses live at the upper stalls. This is how my place was set up when I moved in. There’s no where up top to store hay. I have a little bin that fits 8 bales, so I move hay there once a week rather than carrying a full bale up the hill each day.
I appreciate the perspective from others with arthritis. I really don’t want to deteriorate my joints faster from moving hay. I already HATE moving hay - what a waste that would be.
I’m actually looking through my zoning laws right now to see if I can plop a prefab shed at the top of the hill and get more gravel so that the hay can be delivered right up by the horses without ever needing to move again. I never realized until Scribbler pointed it out, but I am paying for my hay to be stacked and then (slowly over time) restacking it myself! I’m ripping myself off.
I think there are two spots up closer to the horses that might be big enough for the shed and accessible for hay delivery. We have a lot of trees and boulders that make it tricky. I’m going to measure them when I get home from work and send pics to my delivery driver to see if he can make it up with their truck.
My husband has been promising to repair my 4 wheeler for a few months now, but if I can’t get a shed up there, I could at least buy a little flatbed trailer for the 4 wheeler (my neighbor has one that I love) and use that to get the hay up without as much effort as lifting it into the truck. If I ask him to move hay up until the 4 wheeler is repaired, I suspect it will be fixed within a week.
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Think gravity.
And hay hooks are miracles.
Make sure your hay platform is level with your truck bed so you can slide a bale down, push it off, or easily walk it into the truck. That might mean constructing something new or on a slope where you can park your truck on the downhill side. Then, make sure your smaller storage area where you are unloading is lower than the truck bed so you can push the bales off and again, use gravity. I am assuming that you break open the bales there and only have to carry flakes from there. This suggestion might sound expensive and a big design project, but think, one, two, five years down the road at how much it will be worth it. We women have to use our brains where we lack the brawn. It’s also a good idea to design your system so anyone can use it – which can happen if you are on vacation or incapacitated.
Another thought is to consider building a hay storage area at the top of the hill so that the hay supplier can unload there, closer and uphill from your barn or feedlot. Make the platform large enough that you don’t have to stack the hay too high, which is dangerous, especially with those heavy bales.
The other tip is to remember the rule about the lazy man’s load. Don’t try to save work by putting too much hay in the truck in order to do the job in only one trip. You don’t necessarily save work at all because as you say, you have to fight to get the hay to fit in the truck bed and struggle to unload it; better to make two trips where you can load and unload easily, quickly and safely. It may be that your hands are the problem today, but in the future it could easily be your back if you don’t design the heavy work projects in a thoughtful manner with an eye toward ease of use and safety.
edit to add: I was typing as you posted that last post so some of what I wrote won’t apply; I wasn’t neglecting to read your description.
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Have you thought about moving your horses down the hill to the lower two stalls and using the upper shedrow for hay? Would that work?
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Thanks for the suggestion, but no. The stalls up top aren’t accessible from the truck, so this would just result in me dragging even more hay. Also the lower stalls aren’t suitable for my horses needs. They are also arthritic and the upper stalls are set up to give them 24/7 access to turnout, but the lower stalls aren’t fenced in.
It does sound like I might want to invest in some hay hooks! These are pretty 
Has anyone used them? https://www.smartpakequine.com/pt/thandle-hay-hook-21057
Thank you very much I appreciate you sharing your experiences. My primary care doctor diagnosed the arthritis, and suspects RA, so she’s referred me to a rheumatologist. I have a bit of wait for my first appointment, and to be perfectly honest I’ve been very anxious about what this may mean for my future. I really appreciate hearing how well things have gone for your SIL.
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For handling bales, moving and lifting them, the T hook is best.
For dragging bales around, the other one is best, that handle easier on your fingers.
To move bales around, I stand a bale on end with the T hay hook, then put the dolly behind it and lean it on it, don’t have to lift the bale off the ground at all.
If a trailer is low enough, you can do the same, drag a bale to it, stand it on end, let it rest on the trailer and lift with the hay hook on the low end, push with your knee and up it goes without effort, once you catch on how too.
A little trailer you can leave loaded while you feed could work.
If too small for a week’s worth of hay, that is ok, make more trips to get enough hay up there.
Taking care of horses becomes easier all around the longer you do it and more ways you find to cut time and effort.
Keep thinking where you can do better and fix it so you can do it without harm to you.
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I have a love hate relationship with small squares - convenient flake size, a lot of manual labour. I predominantly use rounds or big squares now, all the moving is done with the tractor. if you have access to a tractor with pallet forks it works well to have the small square stacked on pallets so you don’t have to handle them individually.
@walkinthewalk do those Salonpas with Lidocaine patches really work? I bought Blue-Emu with 4% Lidocaine cream and it does NOTHING for the arthritis in my thumbs.
@alabama, the lidocaine salon pas patches help – help being the operative but the material is flimsy and they come off easily unless they are taped down.
i used to be able to get the 5% prescription Lidocaine patches but since I went on retirement Medicare they won’t pay for the patches unless I have Shingles! How dumb is that:(. These patches are a lot more sturdy and not as prone to movement unless it’s a really hot/humid/sweaty day.
If you have insurance that will pay for the 5% Lidocaine patches, have your doctor write a prescription. They are over $200 for a box of 30 without insurance. Who on this earth can afford that!?
