I am so sick of plucking off the fine green mesh that our round bales are wrapped in. It’s miserable stuff to handle, despite how careful I am I occasionally find strands lying around, and afaik it isn’t recyclable.
Is there a less offensive alternative? Something that’s more environmentally sensitive, and won’t harm the horses? Farmers here don’t seem to use twine any more.
Thanks!
Not that I know of. Some farmers here use a mile of thin guage nylon baling twine to wrap rounds. My personal preference is the mesh. IME, the tighter the bale, the longer it stays good.
One winter when I had too much time on my hands I tried crocheting market bags out of the thin nylon twine to sell at the farm market. It worked. But I’m such a slow crocheter that I didn’t get the concept off the ground!
It is certainly possible to use twine for round bales; it is commonly seen here in the upper Mississippi
area. The weight of twine used for round baling is lighter than that used for small square bales. We actually prefer netted round bales as they seem to suffer less surface damage (ours are stored outside until used) and they hold together better until used as well. You might be able to find a better quality mesh. Ours is not especially fine netting and is white rather than green (which only means it is a different product than what you have). It is very strong, almost impossible to tear by hand and comes off pretty easily when we unwrap it from the bale while the bale is suspended on the tractor bale spike just before we unroll the bale to feed it.
You might want to talk to any wool sheep farmers near you about hay baling. I have been told that they will not use plastic mesh for hay bales as it gets into the wool and that substantially decreases the value of the wool clip.
Thanks, both of you! I did some googling after posting, and it appears this is quite a common concern, which isn’t really being addressed effectively by the industry.
Our bales are stored indoors, so protection isn’t a concern, luckily.
I love the idea of crocheting the horrid stuff, Wanderosa! I don’t have the patience or the inclination, but I’ve seen some amazing pieces made from crocheted and knitted plastic bags.
What a time to be alive …
I hate the netting, but someone bales for us and that’s what he uses. I told my husband that when we buy a round baler we’re going to use twine, because the netting is a colic hazard and it’s just not worth it to me.
I bring the bales up and set them on end and then unwrap the netting and fork the hay out , but I miss strands of netting in the hay sometimes and find chewed wads occasionally, where horses have spit them out. I have no idea how many strands they’ve swallowed, but have read about horses who had blockages that had to be surgically removed and would prefer to avoid that!
I have braided ropes out of the netting and they’re very strong, but we can only use just so many ropes!
The twine is just as bad, though. Exactly how many linear feet they use to wrap a bale, I don’t know. But it’s s lot. And it’s under tremendous tension. Which makes
it difficult to cut. So, you either end up cutting it once and playing Ring Around the Rosy until you’re dizzy to unwrap it. Or you pray you don’t chop a finger off trying to wedge a knife or scissors under it multiple times cutting shorter lengths.
We get hay from several different sources. The medium sized round bales are netted and the huge ones are a million feet of twine.
I much prefer the netting. For one, no knife needed and two, it takes about 30 seconds to pull it off and it’s all one piece as opposed to all that twine. I keep the netting on until I’m ready to dump it into the hay feeder then I pull the netting off and drop the bale in. Done, easy peasy
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