Hi all,
I wanted to reach out to see if anyone has ever used, or been exposed to using, a shipping container to store their hay. The hay needs to be protected from a Canadian winter. Any comments, feedback, or reason not to do it?
Thanks in advance,
Stacey
It’s what my feed store uses. He keeps his off the ground, presumably to prevent rot and increase longevity.
When I briefly worked at a private horse sanctuary, some of the hay was stored in a shipping container, also raised off the ground. But humidity and condensation were huge issues in this instance, so there needs to be good ventilation (or a desert environment!). It certainly wasn’t ideal in the warm, humid U.S. Southeast. I threw out a lot of unusable hay that was lovely when it went into the container.
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I work for a chain of farm stores, and we use those at many of our locations. In the PNW, and they hold up well to the rain. We did have issues last winter at one of our stores that got a lot of snow where the doors were freezing shut.
The farm store I used to buy hay from (perhaps where DoubleDown used to work) stored hay in shipping containers.
I stored hay last winter in our neighbor’s container. We had no issues except the door was a PIA. Half the time I could not get the darn thing open.
No experience with shipping containers, but I once boarded at a barn that used the trailer part of a tractor trailer for hay storage. The trailer could get pretty hot and stuffy in the summer if it was closed up so the doors were often left open except during periods of rain. They hay wasn’t packed in tightly. Alfalfa was kept on one side, timothy on the other with a lane down the middle (by no means was the trailer ever close to being full). Spoilage wasn’t a problem, but I could see how it could be if the trailer was full of hay that was packed in tightly and shut up in the hot humid summer months.
Same here, an old trailer still with the wheels under it is where we kept our hay in the stables in Alabama.
We didn’t put a lot of hay in there and it was hard to get up in there to put the hay in and get the hay to feed twice a day.
I think that if someone uses those, it makes more sense to set them at ground level, so easier to access.
We didn’t have any problem with moisture, but we didn’t have a full trailer either.
Those shipping containers are used here in many places for tack and feed rooms as much as hay storage and people that use them for decades like them.
Some use two of those with an aisle between them they put a roof over and that is their barn, where they groom and saddle their horses.
Some have one of those, a roof off it and an aisle and stalls and runs on the other side.
You can cut doors and windows in those any place you need one.
Most paint them barn red.
Those containers work well in so many ways.
producers have been shipping containers of hay to China for years, back in the drought of about 2007 we were directly competing with China for hay for Texas
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-feeding-china-hay-20140609-story.html
Awesome! Thanks everyone! I appreciate all the input, I’m going to give it a try; packing loosely and keeping some air flow. Thanks again 
StaceyA, One thing that has not been covered yet is that not all shipping containers are created equal there are different grades for different purposes. Below is a link to a good explanation.
https://www.csiu.co/used_container_g…_certification
Shipping containers, especially the wood floors are treated with powerful chemicals to prevent insects and other pests from being transported (alive) with the cargo.
It is important to buy your container from a reputable dealer.
If you’re in a hot/humid area, might be worth looking into cutting a solar-powered ventilation fan into the end wall.
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I’ve wondered how they would work in a hot, humid environment for long term storage ( 6-12 months). I have a really hard time here in central Alabama storing hay and it not getting moldy on the outside of the bales due to the humidity. I do not have a hayloft and back in the day when I was doing self-care we had a hayloft and we didn’t have this problem. So I wondered if you had a closed container siting up on wheels or something to keep it off the ground that would keep the humidity down inside the container.
There is one feed store here that sells hay out of enclosed trucks and it never seems to be particularly moldy or musty. But I don’t know if it is stored in there or stored in a warehouse type building and loaded into the truck for sale at the feed store. Another feed store sells “timothy” out of a truck like that but the bales next to the walls and the bottom layer tend to be moldy and bad. But this truck is not air ( or water) tight and there is not fast turn-over of this hay so it sits in there for a while.
I keep searching for a low cost solution to my problem…
As a general rule any environment that is dry and well ventilated works for hay storage. The place where the container sits will often dictate the details of how you establish “dry and well ventilated” but as long as you do that you’ll likely be OK. Or as OK as you can ever be in the place where that container sits!!!
G.
All hay storage at Woodbine, and Fort Erie racetracks is in sea containers. Pretty much fire proof, too.
We stored hay in a shipping container a couple years ago. TO help with ventilation we put the hay on pallets, and put a pallet layer part way through. We also left a gap on all sides and on top. Not humid here though, but we were paranoid about it getting too hot.
I would love to see pictures!
