Moving hay with no equipment?

[paintedpony]

Congrats on your new property !!!

Reconnect with vendor, perhaps equipment can be provided for a fee.

If you are very lucky, and have wonderful new neighbours, they may consider helping you out. (Insert here the need for cookies/beer/pizza, possibly money and grovelling) Problems with this plan are many. Scheduling, willingness, appropriate equipment fit for your storage. They are highly unlikely to loan tractor/skid loader to you, unless you can prove your expertise in operation. (Yeah, new unknown neighbour, please take my $100 K or more tractor to your place and see what damage you can do to it. Sorry I would not loan my tractor to you).

Renting is an option, however very expensive. Pick up and drop off in our area will run you $300 then add the rental fees and insurance. If you do not have the expertise to drive it well, you will be slow to unload. Expect a “standing fee” if unloading takes a long time. LOL, consider the potential damage you may do! That shed door may never shut again after you clip it with the loader. If you can plan several jobs on the property, it might make sense to go this route.

Do you have a plan for delivering hay from storage to feeding location? Is that plan workable in all weather conditions?

I believe you should consider cancelling the order, and purchasing small squares until you have the details worked out.

[quarterhorsemom]

@fourfillies

Before you cancel verify:
a. Hay guy can’t bring a skid steer and/or
b. These aren’t bundled small squares. Around here our hay guys bundle small squares in to large squares for less handling. If needed, though a pain, you could break them open and move by hand

Welcome to home horsekeeping!

Thanks so much for your answer— they were bundled small squares!! This wasn’t explained to me on the phone but explains why our hay guy was so nonchalant about us not having a skid steer! It was a pain for sure, but I’m happy to report we’re all stocked up on hay for the winter. 😊

[fourfillies]

No better feeling than a winter’s worth of hay in the barn 😊👍

[Jarpur]

Bundled small squares are what hay suppliers around here seem to be going with, too – 21 in a bundle.

[Bluey]

21 bale bundles is standard here now.

That size is 8’ wide and just fits most flatbed trailers and trucks, so it is easy to haul on or in most any kind of vehicle.

[4LeafCloverFarm]

Same here with the farm where I get my hay. Unable to find reliable help, he switched to the machine that bundles 21 bales so he could bale and put up the hay all by himself. It fits perfectly on our 5’ X 10’ flatbed trailer.

Only downside is you have to get the whole bundle, and someone has to be at the farm to load it for me, because I don’t know how to drive the contraption that picks them up and loads them on the trailer. He allows people to load themselves if they know how to drive it. It isn’t a tractor - its a single purpose sort of thing with a really long arm on it (about the size of a school bus), as the 21-bale bundles are stacked 3 or 4 high in his hay barn.

[DinkyDonk]

I picked up bundled hay one year with my flat bed–so nice to be loaded (6 bundles) and strapped down in 15 minutes and on my way home again…wish unloading went as fast.

[Jarpur]

@DinkyDonk

I picked up bundled hay one year with my flat bed–so nice to be loaded (6 bundles) and strapped down in 15 minutes and on my way home again…wish unloading went as fast.

Yeah, the loading is faster, but the unloading is slower since the bundles have to be cut apart to fit in our hay shed. We’ve had our way of dealing with small squares for many years, but now things are changing. . .

[Bluey]

That is why people should build barns, hay sheds, feeders, etc. as versatile as possible, not just one size only.

Make structures as open to get into and around inside as possible, large doors and aisles, high ceilings, portable stuff inside that can be moved relatively easily, hay feeding that will accommodate more than one kind of hay or size bales, etc.

Many show barns now are just feeding complete feeds, hardly not any more hay.
That means best to have a place to bring pallets full of sacks of that kind of feed where you used to stack tons of hay.

[candyappy]

@quarterhorsemom

Thanks so much for your answer— they were bundled small squares!! This wasn’t explained to me on the phone but explains why our hay guy was so nonchalant about us not having a skid steer! It was a pain for sure, but I’m happy to report we’re all stocked up on hay for the winter. 😊

Where in the US do you live? 20- 550 pound bundles doesn’t sound like enough hay to get 2 horses through Winter?

Glad you were able to unbundle and move them.

[moving_to_dc]

@candyappy

Where in the US do you live? 20- 550 pound bundles doesn’t sound like enough hay to get 2 horses through Winter?

Glad you were able to unbundle and move them.

That’s 11,000lbs of hay! Even IF winter was 6 months of the year, that would still allow 30lbs of hay PER horse PER day for 6 MONTHS. Where do you live that needs more hay than that???

[Bluey]

@DinkyDonk

This is precisely why I had my small 40 x 48 barn built with 2 12’ overhead doors and a 14’ wide aisle. I have to do small squares, but I can drive my truck and loaded flatbed right through the aisle to unload and stack in 2 extra stalls and a dedicated hay bay. The truck and flatbed fit in the aisle with about 18" to spare (front to back), so I can pull in, and unload at my leisure and not worry about rain-

Neat barn that, good idea to keep hay out of the rain until you get around to unload it.

[DinkyDonk]

Being 65, and loading with the grower who is 70, I definitely do not unload the same day I load!

[4LeafCloverFarm]

I do the same thing @DinkyDonk does - drive my Suburban and flatbed into the isle and park it there where we can leisurely unload it (AARP members here too LOL). Actually I back it in, because the far end of the barn aisle is too low to drive the Suburban through. Our center aisle is 13+’ wide. And has really come in handy over the years having it be that big. But we didn’t build it that way - ours is 120 years old and was probably originally a tobacco barn way back when.

[Simkie]

@moving to dc

That’s 11,000lbs of hay! Even IF winter was 6 months of the year, that would still allow 30lbs of hay PER horse PER day for 6 MONTHS. Where do you live that needs more hay than that???

I dunno, I guess it depends on what’s on the other side, right? Do the horses go out on plentiful pasture in the spring, and graze all summer? Or is “winter” hay fed until first or second cut?

I go through 15 ton of hay feeding four for a year, and I buy it all in the fall, so 5.5 ton for two seems kinda light to me, too…sure, that 15 ton isn’t just for winter, but it’s not like I can (cheaply, easily) buy hay as soon as we see robins in the spring. If you’re buying in the fall, and there’s not grazing to sustain in the spring and summer, you’re really looking at buying for more than just winter.

Tough to call it without more info, though. But a lot people buy “winter” hay to get to when a specific cutting comes off the fields, not to when spring…springs :lol: :lol:

”‹”‹”‹It can be a bit of a gotcha when you first bring them home to realize just buying hay for the WINTER is not a great idea (unless you have good grazing, obvs.) Early spring is usually a $$$ time to buy hay, and sometimes there’s none to be had then at all

[Calvincrowe]

I have two and use 5.5 tons per year. Pasture and beet pulp round out the daily ration. I feed them export quality orchard grass so virtually no waste. Hay use depends so much on what kind is fed, pasture access and size/needs of the horses.

[TMares]

@moving to dc

That’s 11,000lbs of hay! Even IF winter was 6 months of the year, that would still allow 30lbs of hay PER horse PER day for 6 MONTHS. Where do you live that needs more hay than that???

agreed. We put up 12k in square bales and hay 3 horses and one donkey from October to april.7 months ish…

[Polydor]

Bundles of hay bales? Never seen or heard of this before. Can someone explain this please?

P.

[4LeafCloverFarm]

@Polydor

Bundles of hay bales? Never seen or heard of this before. Can someone explain this please?

P.

Once the hay is baled normally in small squares, a machine that picks up 21 bales stacks them in a pile (roughly a cube, but it is longer, more rectangular I guess), then puts heavy duty baling twine around the outside to hold them together, then spits it out. So you end up with this very large “bale” composed of 21 smaller bales.

ETA: Here is an example of one with a video showing how it works.
https://www.balebandit.com/

[Bluey]

@4LeafCloverFarm

Once the hay is baled normally in small squares, a machine that picks up 21 bales stacks them in a pile (roughly a cube, but it is longer, more rectangular I guess), then puts heavy duty baling twine around the outside to hold them together, then spits it out. So you end up with this very large “bale” composed of 21 smaller bales.

ETA: Here is an example of one with a video showing how it works.
https://www.balebandit.com/

That is becoming the standard for small bales today.
One reason, those bundles fit best to fill overseas containers.
So much hay goes to Asia, it is a very strong market.
That created the necessity for that standard.
Everyone else benefits from finally have some way to figure how to move and store most hay, knowing no matter where it comes from how it will have been baled and moved.