Anytime I’ve used hay hooks it ends up feeling like I do bowling - I can’t get them out fast enough and get pulled with the bale. Fine when I’m on the ground, but a couple layers up and I can do without that adrenaline “oh god I’m about to fall” feeling 
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I’ve never used them, but man are the guys fast with them! They have a specific brand, with little leather covers for the handles (no gloves, I’m always amazed about that.)
These, I think:
Size & angle of the hook is probably important, right? Wonder if you had fancy ones if they’d be less heart stopping to use 
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I have always been impressed by people who can use hooks the way they were intended to be used. I have tried but I just can not do it. It is a great skill.
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I have a set, and I’ve used them to slide around heavy bales of alfalfa, but I prefer my leather gloved hands on strings (or wires). The hay hooks hold the bales just that bit further away from my body, which makes lifting the weight of a bale more difficult, although I understand that gripping the hook handles would be easier on my hands than gripping string/wire. I also think that the hooks could cause very serious injury.
Of course, I’m a small older woman, not a young strapping guy. I’m doing well to buck grass bales that are up to half my weight as it is.
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It would depend of course on how you prepared your space before stacking. We tarped and used double pallets to store a small amount in my horse barn.
I would refill that myself from a bigger loft from an old barn on the property as I used it up but it still had some wetness in the right weather conditions. If it was mild I just pulled the affected part off the flake and if the remaining didn’t smell musty I let them pick through it.
If the bales are actually wet, and moldy on the bottom I would not feed them to anything.
Thank you for clarifying what you were saying.
I was (and still am) confused by this part of your original post if you are stacking on a long side, any of the long sides. Drawing up moisture on any long side will ruin the whole bale.
In my case it was so minimal just the first few inches were affected . Kind of discolored and musty but it went no farther in most cases. I could just rip it off.
If you set a bale just on a pallet, or tarp over dirt or gravel it would ruin the whole thing. I never tried trailer mats but I always wondered if they would be a good thing to stack on.
Every time I get a new hay hook, I hook it on the bumper or other solid place and open them some more, so they come off easier when you use them.
My short arms demand I use hay hooks, at least one, can’t reach far enough without them, they make handling bales much easier, if they don’t get stuck for being too “hooky”, as you complain.
This thread is an example of why I miss the location tag we used to have with our forum names.
I suspect the issue with moisture is very regional. I live in the southwest. It’s very dry. My hay is outside on pallets which are placed on top of a tarp on the ground. If they were inside on concrete, I would have still used pallets because I associate concrete with possible dampness, so it’s interesting that @Bluey, who is also in a dry region, doesn’t use pallets on concrete and has had no moisture problems.
My hay bales are stacked long-wise with the twine on the bottom. The fact that there are other ways to do it and reasons to stack it differently is interesting. Since I’m not the one doing the work because the hay delivery guys stack it, I’ve never given it too much thought.
@Bicoastal, thanks for the thread. It’s very informative.
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My bales are heavy, 110-120 lbs., and the strings are so tight that they are squeezed into the bale quite a bit so that it’s difficult to get your fingers under the string, even on the long side. I think the hay guys have to use hooks, even if they might not want to.
That is how my hay guys stack our hay. On their farm, they will take a chain saw and cut the bad bit off the bottom bales so they can feed the good stuff still. You can’t do that if it is stacked string down. I also feel the bales stick together better with the pokey ends down.
This thread shows there is no wrong answer as long as some logic is applied.
As for me, we picked up my hay over the weekend. Small squares bundled. They were not bundled cut side down/vertical like I expected. I suppose different brands bundle differently. Upon getting them home, a two-spike hay spear was not sufficient to hold the bundle together while moving them. Sigh. Easy-to-handle bundles was the whole point.
So I climbed on top of the stacks, cut the bundle twine, and hand-bucked every single one twice. Twice! Once off the neighbor’s huge flatbed onto a smaller trailer, then again into my barn. (Neighbor and I split a load; I sourced and he transported.)
Since I stacked by hand, I went with what I know: twine side down. Bales are on a raised plywood floor over cinderblocks. I think I’m going to like this floor even better than trap-your-ankle pallets.
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How I was taught as well! By a old farmer when I was a kid.
This is how I stack our hay as well. We get around 500 bales a year and they come in bundles of 21. We cut the outside bindertwine off of the 21 stack and then hand stack them in our loft (I mostly do this myself as my husband runs the tractor and brings me the 21 bale/bundle - he helps when I get backlogged). Its in a bank barn and on some older loose hay. I stack bindertwine down since we hand stack them and I find it hard enough to stack them 6 high to fit them all in. If I had them on their sides, I would probably only be able to go 4 high since they are taller that way.
I’m in Southern Ontario and our bales are about 40-50lb so not too heavy thank goodness. We have been stacking hay like this for the past 30 years without any problems.
Same, that’s how dad (the old farmer 
) taught me, up in the loft. Leave some old hay on the floor, bottom row cut side up, alternate your levels to “tie them in.”
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… and make square corners and leave a bale ladder access to the top.
We could put 2320 bales on one side of the quonset, many bales high.
One memorable winter we had one blizzard after another and we ended up needing an extra 10 semis full, some we had to pull in down the icey/muddy road with a tractor.
Our old '52 feed truck held 75 bales, took many trips in grandma gear plowing thru the snow to get everything fed and ice broken.
Some days they measured our wind chill at -60F, sure was cold feeding out of that truck.
When you have to handle a lot of bales by hand, you learn what works best where you are and why, the hard way.
One neighbor we bought hay from, stacked, didn’t make a good stack and half of it fell into the aisle, was a terrible mess. He and his son came and re-stacked it, properly this time.
Bet they were careful next time they had to stack hay. 
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We’re cut side down on the idea that it won’t draw up as much moisture on that side and it’s less surface area on the ground. In my world the bottom bales are mostly throw aways and part of the deal when buying hay is you have to take the bottom bales and not cherry pick off the middle of the stack. The top bales usually were the snow shield and were usually pretty good; our winters were bitter cold and arid so rain wasn’t as much an issue then. I’ve lived long enough to see that change a bit. We don’t deal in small bales much any more but years ago there were still lots of small squares and when you bought it you went to the stack and peeled off your 27 bales or whatever was supposed to make your ton. The stacks were always just out on dirt, at the edge of the hayfield, nothing underneath. They were machine stacked so all on strings from top to bottom and often the ends of the stacks fell and there was almost always a pole holding the end of the stack up. We used hay hooks a lot, the old rancher we worked with had made his own hooks that we inherited; they were short and had double hooks, so much more stable and easier to use.
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