Bringing in (some of) the hay

It's that time of year when we need to start considering winter. This means, among much else, bringing in the hay.

Last year, somewhat out of desperation, we purchased a moderate amount of oat hay to tide us over the winter when we ran low on feed. Not oat straw; but oat hay, with the seeds intact. There was nothing else available for sale. It made for immensely heavy bales, but the seller assured us his cows loved it.

Yowza, he wasn't kidding. Our cows positively stinkin' adore this oat hay. So, since the seller's prices are comparable to regular grass hay, we let him know early in the spring that we were committing to purchasing eight tons when he harvested his fields.

Before we could take delivery, however, we needed to figure out how to stack and store the hay. This took several weeks of strategic planning. The reason is because neither Don nor I are willing (or even able) to lift 100-lb bales, much less 160 of them (eight tons), at our age. We needed to let the tractor do the heavy lifting. To do that, we needed specialized implements. And so the planning began.

We already have heavy-duty spikes that attach to the tractor bucket that can be used to support heavy things, such as hay bales. But when Don tried to stab a bale with these spikes to lift it, the spikes were too thick and didn't penetrate the bale. They merely push it. Last year we got by with these spikes because I pushed every bale on top of the spikes, but it was brutally hard work and awkward to place the bales where we wanted.

So this year, Don wanted spikes that actually penetrated the bales. To this end, he worked with a neighbor who does welding and metal work. Don ordered a couple of stainless steel rods capable of supporting 200 lbs. each and brought them to the neighbor. This fellow sharpened the tips of the rods into a dull point, and then welded the rods to a base that could attach to the tractor bucket. This way, Don could stab a bale to move it. As it turned out, these steel rods worked extremely well.

We ordered a delivery of 20 pallets from a nearby hardware store. We have pallets all over the place, but by this point most of them are so rotten and broken that they're not worth much more than scrap wood. This hardware store sells newer pallets for $4/each (delivered). We'd have gone to pick them up ourselves, but we're without a truck at the moment so delivery worked better.

The next thing Don did was to order fork-lift attachments that fit on the front of the tractor bucket. The idea is we could stack the bales on a pallet, lift the loaded pallet with this fork-life attachment, and transport the pallets into the barn and/or into an outdoor location to be tarped for the winter (we knew in advance we didn't have room in the barn for all eight tons).

Next, of course, we cleaned the barn and made as much space as possible.

The issue of stacking the bales was compounded by a lack of room. The driveway area in front of the barn is V-shaped and bisected by an enormous plum tree, as well as being sloped. The barn itself is limited in space since it has both the wood shop and the tool shop bracketing the center aisle, so maneuverability with the tractor is limited.

This is the reality of what we have to deal with. Our job was to make it work.

The seller made arrangements to deliver the first two tons, which come in two-strand 100-lb. bales. Here, Don is directing the farmer who is backing his trailer up our lower driveway.

Forty bales. That's our first load. It would be an opportunity to test our equipment and techniques to see what works and what doesn't.

These are the steel tines. They worked beautifully as long as we positioned them lower in the bale. If they were higher, they just slid out the top and snagged the baling twine, which was too unsteady (the bales were more likely to explode).

You can see the tips of the tines poking out.

By this technique, we managed to get first four, then six bales neatly stacked on a few pallets. My job during this process was not just guiding Don on the finer points of positioning, but then to push and shove the bales into cross-wise positions (since there was no room for the tractor to come in from different directions).

Incidentally, we stacked the pallets under the plum tree in the driveway, which proceeded to rain overripe squishy plums on top.

As we worked, we squashed plums underfoot and against the pallets. Honestly, it looked like we were working in a crime scene, with blood smeared everywhere.

After we got a few pallets stacked, it was time to remove the steel tine attachments and switch over to the fork lift attachments to move the pallets into the barn.

As it turned out, Don got the wrong-sized attachments. He thought the 43-inch attachments would suffice, rather than the 60-inch attachments. What he didn't realize was those measurements didn't apply simply to the length of the tines, but to the overall length of the attachments (including the portion that affixes to the tractor bucket). As a result, the tines didn't extend or support the entire width of a pallet, which meant transporting a pallet of hay bales was tippy to the point of dangerous.

The first pallet he tried to pick up tipped, tumbling all the bales off and exploding one of them. Grunt.

This was due, in part, to the limitations of the tractor as well. The weight of the bales plus the pallet, cantilevered out from the front of the bucket, was too much for the hydraulics on the tractor. He could lift the pallet, but the hydraulics would not let him tip it inward to compensate for the angle of lift, so everything fell off. Ironically, if he had the means to attach the fork-life tines to the back of the tractor, he could have lifted all six bales with ease – but we didn't have that. In other words, we had to figure things out as we went.

In the end, we restacked the pallets with four bales instead of six, and that worked well enough that he could carefully creep and transport a few pallets in the barn. Frustratingly, there wasn't enough space in the barn to maneuver the tractor to stack the pallets in a tidy rectangular arrangement. Instead, we had to put them in a diagonal formation. We tried stacking ten bales high, with me standing on a stepstool to position the bales while directing Don on the tractor. It. Took. Hours.

By this point we had some weather moving in (thunderstorm), so we hastily transported the contents of the exploded bale inside. We just dumped the hay on the floor, to be used first.

Then we tarped the remaining stacked pallets until conditions cleared. (We moved them into the barn a couple days later.)

Processing these forty bales took, I kid you not, about eight hours of work – and we still have another 120 bales coming in! At least now we have a better idea of what works and what doesn't. We estimate we can fit about half the total number of bales in the barn, and the rest will have to be stacked and stoutly tarped outside. It will actually be easier to stack them outside since at least there's a little more maneuvering room than in the barn.

I guess all this exercise is keeping us healthy at our age....

Spreading the benefits

Don and I, as often happens, underestimated the amount of hay we needed to get the livestock through the winter. I don't know why, but we do that a lot. So, late last November, we started looking for more hay to purchase.

But hay tends to sell quickly and can be hard to find off-season. We inquired of our usual sources and learned everything had already sold. Finally, through various means, we connected with a fellow who had oat hay available in 100-lb. bales.

Oat hay. Hmmm. We'd never fed oat hay to our livestock before, but the seller assured us his own cows loved the stuff. So, since the price was decent and (more importantly) he had some available, we ordered four tons.

Now here's the thing: By every metric we were familiar with, 100-lb. bales of hay should be fairly large, but these bales of oat hay were pretty much standard size. But, groan, they were very heavy, to the point where Don and I simply couldn't lift them. At all. The best we could do was push and shove and tip them to move them around, and we had to use the tractor to stack them with any semblance of neatness.We got about half the bales in the barn, and the rest we stacked in the driveway on a series of pallets, which we later tarped.

What made the bales so heavy? In a word, oats. This wasn't oat straw, it was oat hay, harvested with the seed intact. Whenever we moved a bale, a festive layer of oats was left behind.

Okay fine, but would the cows like it?

Oh. My. Yes. The cows stinkin' adore it. They attack it greedily, and prefer it over anything else we've ever fed them. Interestingly, it's boosted Maggie's milk output, too. Due to the natural decline of milk production with an older calf (and the fact that she's pregnant), I had been getting about half a gallon a day, even though I give her some grain every morning in the milking stall. But with the extra boost of nutrition from this oat hay, her output has ramped up to a gallon a day with ease. (I plan to dry her off, i.e. stop milking, in early March. Her calf is due in late June.)

With an eye toward having some hay put aside for next year, we called the seller and asked if he had any more for sale. Sadly, no, he'd sold it all. So we told him to put us on his list for this summer's crop.

Meanwhile, the oat hay is "spreading the benefits" as other animals have discovered it.

The Oregon juncoes, sparrows, and black-capped chickadees descend on the oat hay debris, whether outside in the driveway or inside the barn.

But the biggest beneficiary of this largess are the turkeys.

Turkeys, as I've mentioned before, are nature's Roombas. They wander the landscape, finding everything even remotely edible, and clean it up. They tend to aggregate in enormous flocks during the winter, sometimes in groups as large as fifty or sixty or more birds. Groups of about one to two dozen are most common. Now, it seems, one or more of those groups have found their way into the corral.

On any day of the week, I can creep into the barn, peer through the slats of the feed box, and catch a dozen turkeys inside the barn. They scratch through the cow poop and gobble up any oat seeds they find.

Sometimes they'll scratch around in the mud of the corral, breaking up cow patties and finding the edible bits inside.

Most, however, can be found on the barn waste pile. Turkeys love barn waste any time, but especially now that it's rich in oat seeds. Bonanza!

Such prehistoric-looking creatures, aren't they?

Turkeys perform a highly valuable service for us, since their activities aid in decomposition for the barn waste on its journey to becoming compost.

Eventually, either sated with seeds or spooked by my presence, the turkeys will leave the barn and aggregate in the lower pasture.

Then, with powerful beats of their wings, they'll become airborne long enough to clear fences and land downhill from any perceived danger.

So yes, the oat hay is spreading the benefits. The passerine birds as well as the turkeys get some meals. The cows are getting extra nutrition. I'm getting plenty of milk for making cheese. Not a bad deal.

Moving hay

Late last June, if you remember, we purchased fifteen 600-lb. round bales of hay (4.5 tons) delivered for our upcoming winter cattle feed. (Ironically the farmer delivered them during one of the fiercest thunderstorms we've had in a long time.) After the weather calmed down, Don neatly stacked the bales in the front driveway and we tarped them against any subsequent rainstorms.

Now it was time to move those bales from the front of the house to the back, where we wanted to stack as many inside the barn as would fit.

One thing became apparent at the time the bales were delivered: These bales weighed way, way more than 600 lbs. each. Don estimates they exceed 800 lbs. The farmer was apologetic; apparently he had never used a round baler before, and it took some adjustment, so the bales turned out a lot bigger than he anticipated. Still, he gave us 15 bales at the original price he quoted, so we weren't arguing that we got closer to six tons for the price of four and a half.

These bales were almost comically misshapen. Most were wound tighter on one end than the other, leading to a humorous mushroom shape. But hey, we weren't arguing about their appearance. We appreciated the extra tonnage.

But the extra-heavy bales did present one quandary: Our tractor couldn't lift them using the front-loader spikes, which cantilever weight away from the main body of the tractor. How were we going to move 15 bales from the front driveway to the barn in back?

So, after doing some research, Don made one of the few new purchases we've made since I lost my job last February: A hay bale spike that goes on the back of the tractor. Attached to the three-point hitch, this spike is able to lift a couple thousand pounds, so it easily handled the round bales.

More and more farmers are transitioning to round bales, so this purchase was way overdue.

Anyway, with the change in weather, Don was anxious to get as much hay under cover as possible. The cattle were almost finished with the last of the old hay, so Don took the opportunity to clean out the center part of the barn. This was highly educational, as he kept uncovering tools or items that had been missing for nearly five years, since we moved in ("So that's where my spare Sawzall went!").

Finally, after about a week of sorting and tidying, the center part of the barn was fairly open. (If you peer closely, you can see what's left of the last remaining old hay bale in the center back.)

Don untarped the new hay bales. Some of the bales had a few rotty spots, but for the most part they were in very good condition. Additionally, these bales are much higher quality hay than the stuff we'd bought last spring to tide us over.

One by one, Don positioned the tractor by a bale, backed the spike into it, and lifted the bale into the air. 

Then he drove around to the lower driveway and brought the bale to the barn.

Once at the opening of the barn, he dropped the bale just outside.

Then he turned the tractor around and, using the bucket, tipped it on its end. Alley-oop!

Once it was tipped up, he used the bucket to slide the bale over the concrete floor of the barn. His goal was to cram as many bales in the barn as possible. There is very little maneuvering room in this space, so it's not like we could stack them or anything. Besides, we needed the bales to be positioned so that we could cut the twine that binds them and unpeel the hay when it's time to feed the animals.

You can see the size difference between these newer bales (left) and the last remnant of the old 500-lb bales we bought last March (right). For one thing, the newer bales are over five feet high (they're taller than me), and wider in diameter. (This photo is an unfair comparison since the old bale is mostly used up.)

In the end, Don managed to squeeze 10 of the 15 bales into the barn, nine of which are shown below.

For the remaining five bales, he laid down pallets just off the main driveway and stacked the bales in a pyramid, then we tarped the bloody heck out of them and tied the tarps tight.

We broke into one of the new bales a couple days ago, and the cows are crazy for it. In fact, just tonight Maggie didn't even want her usual evening grain. She wanted hay.

This is yet another example of what we're doing to batten down the hatches for winter. Now we have plenty of feed inside the barn to last all during the cold and snowy months, and enough tarped in the driveway to get us through the muddy spring months.

Bringing in the hay

About a year and a half ago, we found a good deal on hay. We bought 4.5 tons for a decent price.

This was long before we had our cows, of course, but hay stored under cover does fine for a couple of years (meaning, it doesn't lose much of its nutritional value).

This hay fed our cows all through the winter, but we knew in advance it wouldn't be enough to get them through the lean early-spring time, so we've been keeping an eye out for another good deal.

We found it. A local farmer was selling "okay"-quality hay in 500-lb. round bales. Round bales aren't our first choice, but the price was right, so we bought three tons (12 bales).

The farmer was able to deliver them (which was nice, since we don't have the means to transport a lot of hay), and Don was able to offload the bales from the man's flatbed and place them next to the driveway for the night.

The next day, Don moved the bales. He used tines attached to front of the tractor bucket...

...to stab a bail and hoist it up.

One by one, he transported the bales up the lower driveway to the barn area.

He stacked them neatly in an area heavy with gravel (meaning, good drainage). We anchored one side with a railroad tie to keep the bales from rolling.

The other side has cinder blocks to accomplish this task.

Then, since rain was threatening, we fetched a large tarp and got it over the hay and anchored.

This hay has some discolored spots, but it's not moldy. We can discard any parts that aren't good and feed the cows with the rest.

We didn't store the hay in the barn because, at the moment, we don't have room. Not only do we still have some bales left from our first batch, but the barn was messy and disorganized after a winter of shoving things "temporarily" under cover and then leaving them there. (The totes of Christmas items were still on the floor instead of up in the loft, for example.)

For the last couple days, Don has been cleaning the barn with a vengeance, and it's looking vastly improved. He still has a lot of anonymous totes and crates that even now, four years after moving here, hasn't been sorted. He suspects most of it is junk and will get discarded, but of course he needs to go through them all to confirm.

At any rate, this hay will last us well into the warm months when the grass in our pasture will be tall enough to let the cows graze without supplementing.

In all our years of rural living, raising and baling our own hay is one thing we've never been able to do. We've never had the acreage, the equipment, or the money. We accept this limitation and know that purchasing hay is just one of the things we'll have to do each year.

Additionally, this is one of the few planned purchases we had in mind following my job loss and our subsequent financial "tightening of the belt." Under no circumstances would we ever allow our animals to suffer.