What makes hay lose all color between baling and winter feeding?

[J-Lu]

Hi All,

What makes baled grass (mixed orchard, fescue, timothy) go from green when baled to sort of the brown/yellow of dead grass (not musty or moldy) when stored (not in sun)? Is it the storage conditions or the types of grass or …? The hay I’m thinking of came from a field literally next door (it has been harvested for 2 cuts for many years by a local hay supplier). It was quite green when it arrived, and is stored on one layer of wood pallets on concrete in a large barn area. It seems like the green bales sold in my area come from from far out of state, which makes me wonder if some grasses stay greener/hold nutrients better than others. ? Or is it the conditions that the grass grows in? I’m in NC, and the last two years have been considered bad hay years. I don’t know if this contributes to why hay loses or doesn’t lose color.

Any information is appreciated. Thanks!

[HungarianHippo]

Hay loses color due to leaching (such as, got rained on before baling), and/or oxidation (loose bales) Either way, it generally signals a loss of nutrients.

[Bluey]

Talking alfalfa, only the outside of the bales should lose color.
The inside should still be nice green.
I just started a new stack and the outside of that first bale had three yellowed out sides, but the inside was beautiful green.

[J-Lu]

Thanks, @HungarianHippo . I know this batch didn’t get rained on before baling (all hayers in the area were freaking out about this last year-small window of time to hay), and the bales were tightly baled. Or at least to me, seem like “regular” bales. The guy who baled thought our barn stacked the bales too close together and had the BOs put a fan in the barn for air circulation. Could this be a factor? Yes, there’s so much waste of this hay around the barn, and I purchased alfalfa to feed on top of this hay. I suspect it lost nutrients. Do you think the storage conditions could be a factor? Given what I said above, can you think of other reasons that could contribute to the bales losing color?

@Bluey, yes. But this is not the case for these bales. Then again, most of the bales like you describe seem to come from far out of state. My alfalfa bales are great, they come from Utah. Another boarder pays $$$ for orchard bales from upstate NY (they are very nice). All of the the nice bales I’ve seen come from out of state.

The store that sells the alfalfa bales say they are cut from HUGE alfalfa bales that are shipped to a factory in the NE that cuts and triple-binds these bales.

[Pippigirl]

Is it possible that the hay grown far away has had preservatives sprayed on it first before being sold
in your area?

[J-Lu]

@Pippigirl

Is it possible that the hay grown far away has had preservatives sprayed on it first before being sold
in your area?

I don’t know. I only recently discovered this was a “thing”.

[Pippigirl]

@J-Lu

I don’t know. I only recently discovered this was a “thing”.

Few years ago at a barn I was at they decided to purchase local hay that had preservatives applied . I’m not sure what they used now but the hay looked great, smelled great and after tasting some (gotta try it right!) I couldn’t taste anything different. The horses disagreed. But the bales looked nice and green!

[SusanO]

The western bales that I am feeding are a bright green color as opposed to the Tennessee orchard grass I also feed. This is most likely due to the low humidity levels where they are grown and baled. The hay cures so much faster out west so it can be baled a lot quicker than in the south east and it doesn’t loose color. According to my horses it tastes better too. It ranges from light green to green as growing grass which was their favorite of all the hay I have bought this year. No preservatives - mine hate them. The quicker it cures and you can bale it up - the less color loss you have.

[SuzieQNutter]

If you put hay in a bucket and add water, if it has been sprayed the water will turn green.

If it was baled wet the inside would be hot and would have burned down your barn.

Generally shedded hay is better than new hay. Cut one open and see what you think of it inside.

[J-Lu]

@SuzieQNutter . Thanks for the info about testing if the hay was sprayed! Yea, these bales are not green inside but not musty or bad-smelling. They just seem to have lost their nutrition. Horses are just picking at it (they’re turned out on well-maintained pastures, but it is winter), which is why I added alfalfa.

Thanks @SusanO . The humidity might well be a factor. As I remember last year, the first baling was between rains in my area. I think that general humidity was why the farmer was stressed about our storage and told me to put fans to move air. I did.

The non-local bales are so expensive! They’re twice or more expensive as the local hay, and in aggregate, not feasible.

Are we doing something wrong with our hay storage? Is there anything that can be done to maintain the quality of the local hay or it the loss of nutrients/color out of our hands?

I know so little about baling hay, I really appreciate all of your comments!

[Bluey]

Here, if the hay is swathed and in windrows and gets a rain, by the time it is dry enough to bale, some of it will have bleached, yellowed some.
Then the flakes bale striped, two colored.

We are so dry here, when they swathe the alfalfa, if it is that dry, they use a mister to bale so the leaves don’t shatter.
Striped hay is still good hay, it loses very little nutrients, mostly vitamin A, which alfalfa will lose in the first six months stored anyway.

Making hay will turn your hair grey in a hurry.

[SuzieQNutter]

Over here you only get green lucerne (alfalfa) hay in winter. In summer the sun dries it and takes the colour out. The colour doesn’t mean anything.

What you look for is properly dried hay. Wet hay will go mouldy and burn your shed down.

We bale at night. If you bale during the day you knock all the leaf off. You go down on dusk. You crush leaf in you hand. If it pulverises you wait until you can crush it and the leaf stays there. You then start baling and you bale as fast as you can as once the dew is down you have to stop baling. The bales become too heavy and dence.

[SuzieQNutter]

We store on a pallet so air can get underneath. I have never heard of fans being used but I am on the other side of the World.

[S1969]

@HungarianHippo

Hay loses color due to leaching (such as, got rained on before baling), and/or oxidation (loose bales) Either way, it generally signals a loss of nutrients.

This. Well, I wasn’t sure about the nutrition with color, so I googled, and it is a factor. But apparently, the key to color is how long it takes to dry the hay - hay that dries quickly will retain its color more than hay that dried over time. So humidity is a big factor in color, which unfortunately most farmers can’t control.

https://ker.com/equinews/color-horse-hay-mean/

Sometimes we’re just lucky that it gets cut and dried at all if the weather is against you.

My neighbor grows some straw from time to time in a vacant field next door to my property (alternates corn, straw, etc.) and bales it for his father who has cows. One year they got rained on every time they got on the tractor. It was almost like they did it on purpose which of course they didn’t. I felt so bad for them - it was almost like “hey it’s about to rain, Ken is cutting/teddering/baling now. Batten down the hatches!”

[JB]

Green is a sign of Vitamin A (among other things), and Vit A degrades fairly quickly.

hay loses VERY little nutrition once properly cured. Vit A and E go pretty quickly (E goes faster), but minerals and amino acids don’t degrade.

Some hay gets sprayed with proprionic acid which also helps preserve color. This is a lot more common with alfalfa than grass hay, as the acid is used to help speed up the drying process once baled, and alfalfa sometimes has to be baled with more moisture than ideal, for a variety of reasons, including taking longer to dry, but also to avoid too much leaf shatter during bailing.

Light - any light - bleaches hay.

I would not use color to judge the quality of hay. My round bales, stored deep in the middle of a big barn from Spring cutting, that I pick up mid-late Winter, are all light tan on the outside. But just a layer in and they are nearly as green as when they were baled, which is some degree of bleached from when cut.

[Simkie]

@J-Lu

They just seem to have lost their nutrition.

Do you have a couple of tests showing this, or are you saying it’s lost its nutrition because it’s not green? You really can’t tell anything about the hay by it’s color. Sure, some things like vitamin e or a decrease pretty quickly in baled hay (in ALL baled hay, regardless of color) but overall, hay baled well does not lose much of it’s nutrition.

You really need to be looking at a hay test, not the bale, to judge what sort of nutrition it carries. Even palatability isn’t really relevant–that’s largely separate from nutrition. You can’t say that because your horses don’t want to eat it, it’s not nutritious or it’s bad hay.

There are a lot of great articles out there that break down these elements. Google around for how to interpret your hay test and you should be able to pull them up.

[Huntin_Pony]

As a pony owner, I have spent much time studying Katy Watts’ work and listening to folks who focus on feeding laminitis-prone horses. (See SaferGrass.org - many articles and good advice.)

One of the things I learned is that it’s much more informative to have hay tested than to guess at its nutritional content. This year, I have been testing each load and the results hammered home the message that I can’t tell by looking (or smelling or otherwise inspecting) what the hay offers nutritionally (cleanliness yes, but otherwise, no).

EquiAnalytical in Ithaca NY (affiliate of Dairy One) will give you a quick (one-day turnaround often) analysis for $18. They have more advanced analyses for more money but I have not needed those. It might be worthwhile to test the hay.

The horses of course may or may not like the hay regardless of the nutritional value, but at least you’ll have the data.

Just posted at the same time as Simkie (LOL).

[J-Lu]

Oh, interesting @JB. The alfalfa hay I’m currently feeding has so much leaf shatter we carry it in a bucket. I always wondered about that. @Simkie and @Huntin’ Pony , thanks! We planned to test this hay in December, and my local extension would lend me a device to core hay, but time flew by. EquiAnalytical analyzed my pasture grass - thanks for the reminder! Good to be reminded that palatability doesn’t relate to nutrition!

Thanks for the information, everyone! I will do more homework in the classroom of Google.

[candyappy]

If it was over dried ( let sit too long) or cut later than optimal, I think you will see some color loss. Was it first cutting?

We do wrapped rounds that I feed by hand and I do see some color loss as we unwind and feed them ( could be from exposure to light under the lean to) . We also do first and second cut squares of the same fields and those bales are a bit lighter than when first baled but not much.

Are your horses happy eating the hay and doing well on it? If so I wouldn’t worry much. You could add a supplement if you think vitamins are lacking?

[jawa]

I bought some small squares from a hay guy during the STUPID, VERY WET year we had (normal rain is around 40", we had over 70"). It was over mature, very yellow, loose, light bales. I was a bit depressed that this is what I had purchased, but hay was at a premium, so hay in the barn is better than not… I was able to purchase some additional hay that was a beautiful green, soft blades, smelled SOOO good. Wouldn’t you know the horses ate EVERY SINGLE BIT of the over mature, yellow, loose, light baled hay and would pick through the green, soft bladed, good smelling hay. HORSES!!!