This is what I just struggle to get my mind around. How can someone who professes to love horses DO THAT to any animal? Intellectually, I get that she’s just an abuser, and that’s what abusers do…but man, I just don’t get it. I guess maybe it’s a status thing, or a power thing…? Otherwise, why have animals at all?
Brief hay lesson:
The length of the bale is set by the farmer who adjusts the baler to “X” inches. You can have 24" bales or 48" bales or anything inbetween. The farmer typically sets this size to stack neatly in a barn, semi trailer, or to fit properly in an accumulator, grapple, or other bale-gathering device. Length may also be adjusted to account for weight/density. It’s common to set bale length to double or triple the chamber width; ie, 14"x16" would probably be set at 32" or 48", so when stacking bales two-by-two, or three by three, two or three bales wide equals one bale long (I hope that makes sense).
Tension is also set. Tension is the tightness of the bale, how much tension on the strings, and affects how much a bale will weigh. (Lots of tension = heavy bale. Less tension = light bale). Most farmers prefer to bale tightly, as it makes bales easier to stack, easier to pick up, and saves on storage (more tonnage per sq ft). Hay that is baled with sisal string (the natural twine) cannot be as tight as plastic twine-- sisal has a much lower tensile strength and will pop if pulled to tightly (if you’ve ever tied with twine, you already know this…horses break sisal string much easier than plastic twine!). Good farmers will use plastic twine with an appropriate tensile strength for the weight and density of their bales. IF your hay is slightly higher in moisture than ideal when baled, the farmer may intentionally reduce the tension so the bales are a bit looser, allowing more airflow and reducing heating/fermentation/combustion.
Size of flakes: this is less a function of the baler and more a result of the width/size of your windrow (That’s the actual cut forage laying on the ground in lines feeding into the baler). Windrow size is determined by the height and thickness of the forage you’ve just cut, and how your rake is set (wide or narrow). Very thick windrows with LOTS of grass will stuff quickly into the chamber, with each thrust of the plunger packing a flake into the bale. Lots of hay feeding in = very big, thick flakes, perhaps only 7-10 flakes per 36" bale. A thinner windrow will result in less forage feeding into the chamber at a time; the plunger is still pushing at a set rate per minute (a function of the tractor PTO spinning), so it takes more plunges to make up the same 36" bale, meaning 10-15 flakes per 36" bale, and each flake will be much thinner. THIS is why you can’t feed your horses “by flake,” because a flake created from a thick windrow may weigh 6lbs, and a flake from a thin windrow may only weigh 2lbs. (The type of forage matters, too.) However, density also comes into play! A 2" thick flake of alfalfa could weigh as much as a 4" thick flake of bluegrass baled with sisal string. WEIGH YOUR HAY.
Windrow size can very for lots of reasons: first cut is typically thicker, more tons per acre than later cuts, so first-cut hay typically has bigger windrows resulting in bigger flakes. Later cuts in the season will often be less quantity, thinner windrows, finer stems/more leaf, and more/thinner flakes in the bale. The farmer could keep raking the field over and over throwing multiple windrows into one, to make bigger windrows for those later cuts, but it may not be cost/time effective to do so.
Thank you for coming to my hay TED Talk.
*I’ve baled over 10,000+ small squares and perhaps 5,000+ large squares (3x3x8s). My husband has done 300x that. I’ve baled and fed alfalfa, orchardgrass, timothy, brome, rye, and clover (and all mixes thereof). Any of them can be excellent; any of them can be terrible. All have some place in a horse’s proper diet at minimum 2% bodyweight per day.
We must have had the same undergrad professor! 
I think it has become abundantly clear why Kate has complained repeatedly on social media about people “stealing” her previous AZ hay…
20 lbs. of hay, no matter how majikal that hay is, is insufficient to feed a late term or lactating broodmare. I have three Arabians - two adults and one coming two year old - with a combined body weight of 2800 pounds. That’s roughly equal to 2 large horses. They eat 1 55-60 pound bale of (per Kate) “shitty Tennessee” orchardgrass hay and 1/3 of a 60-65 pound bale of (per Kate) “shitty Tennessee” alfalfa hay per day. And they are in more than acceptable body condition.
Feeding horses isn’t complicated. Give them as much high quality - quality being determined by more than RFV - forage per day as they can consume. Provide required vitamins and minerals via a ration balancer if that’s all that is needed to keep them in good weight or a quality, balanced, commercial feed if more calories are required.
Done.
Signed, once again, your friendly resident equine nutritionist.
Thank god a semi holds 20-21 tons lol! And somehow that never lasted me even two months! But thank you for finally doing the math!
I would not be the slightest bit surprised that a modern baler has a setting for that in actual inches but I can promise you that there is not a inches setting on our baler. Yes, we can adjust the length and density of the bales, but it is , crank it two more times, not an inch setting.
And again not sure how many times I feed 20lbs not two flakes. You all got that assumption from who knows where. Typically in these bales 1/5 of a 100lb bales is 3-4 flakes and they have free choice grass round bales outside lol. But that’s ok you all keep going on with the two flake thing. I’ve never said 2 flakes! I’m not dumb. I said 1/5 a bale use your discretion to make sure they get enough
Yes, 100%. It’s not that sophisticated, I just wanted to get the point across that the farmer does have control over the length of the bale, and it can be adjusted as desired. By trial and error. Lol.
So weird that your horses are still so skinny. Darn.
Your horses are not getting enough. Can’t you see that? You are truly the last person that should even discuss the proper nutrition and feeding of horses.
Then why are all your horses underweight, some severely so?
Nope just every single person on the west coast lol
Then why are all your horses underweight, some severely so?
“Lol”?
Again, there’s nothing funny about this. These horses were YOUR RESPONSIBILITY.
or this;
I wonder what you were doing with it because you clearly weren’t feeding it to your horses. Do you think someone stole it? Or it just disappeared one day?
I’ve only lived on the west coast my entire life, around some of the top warmblood sporthorse breeders on the coast, spent a portion of it on some of the best hay growing regions in the country…every single one of them would tell you that dairy hay is inappropriate for horses.
I know you’re BSC and the argument isn’t worth it because your delusion is stronger than reality but, alas.
Exactly. A lifelong friend, who rode with Dianne Grod for years before switching to reining, owned a large feed store in SoCalif. Any alfalfa that wasn’t quite up to snuff was sold at a discount to the dairy farms that at the time populated Chino and Riverside.
lol
When it is stated that everyone/no one does something, the person making the statement has proved themselves to be unreliable.
That would be Kathryn Shearer, in case my meaning was unclear.
Remind me, how many years does it take to pass a bar exam? Is it noted how many times someone takes the exam in a particular state before passing it?
Zero. Graduate. Do Barbri. Sit exam. Start to finish under 3 months from graduation.
It used to be published but not sure how it works now.
My my - she got her degree years ago but still hasn’t passed the bar anywhere at all, near as I can figure. So her quality as an attorney is no better than her horse care.
She must not have gotten a job out of law school. The firm or org you go to after graduation usually pays for your bar exam study course. Then you sit the exam and then start your job.
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