Making hay in monsoon season--Update

[Rosalind]

We don't use an awful lot of hay, really. Just a few bales for dog bedding in the barn and lining chicken nest boxes. The backyard is planted in really premium haymaking grasses, as the last owner of this place had a horse and sheep, which he raised mostly on our pasture. So we figured, why not let the backyard grow nice and tall, and take some straw and hay crops out of it?

I grew up in farm country, so I am well aware that making hay involves several sequential days of sunny or light-showers weather. Also the physical labor involved in haymaking, but I could use the exercise and it's only, like, five bales' worth. I can do five bales.

Earlier in the summer, DH cut the first hay crop, and spread it out to dry over what was originally predicted to be a sunny week. Yeah, a series of daily thunderstorms killed that crop, and I got about half a bale's worth till all was said and done. DH cut another crop just two days ago, and the tops of it are dry but the stuff underneath is still wet. I realize that technically I should be raking it over and waiting three more days before stacking, but we've got yet another thunderstorm predicted for tonight and we had one last night, too. If I leave this lot in the pasture to dry, it'll rot, no doubt about it, and blow into a giant slimy mess.

My question is, can I pick up all the half-dry hay and spread it out thinly in the hayloft (I have a big hayloft which is currently empty) for a few days, then rake it up into stacks in the hayloft to finish curing? I know this is not the proper way, but my other option is to buy hay all year, and this year there've been plenty of days when you just could not buy hay or straw for any price.

 

[patandchickens]

My question is, can I pick up all the half-dry hay and spread it out thinly in the hayloft (I have a big hayloft which is currently empty) for a few days, then rake it up into stacks in the hayloft to finish curing? I know this is not the proper way, but my other option is to buy hay all year, and this year there've been plenty of days when you just could not buy hay or straw for any price.

You can try it. It really depends a lot on how well ventilated your loft is. Make sure to spread THINLY (I'm not really saying this for you, I'm saying this for anyone else who might be reading and might not be as alert about the risks of barn fires).

OTOH you have one huge advantage over normal hay-producers, which is that you do not care about the nutrient content of the hay. It can get as leached and brown as it wants and as long as it dries out it'll make just as good chicken or dog bedding as ever. It seems to me that the only factor limiting your ability to dry it in the field is that eventually the new stuff will start to grow thru it and mat it together (tho if you keep raking it over and fluffing it up, this should not happen for quite a while). So I think that it would also be an option to just leave it in the field for longer, and hope to get a long enough stretch of dry weather. I would not say this if you were going to feed it to anything, but for bedding, why not.

(edited to add afterthought: since this is a small quantity, is there anything you could use as a hayrack to drape the cut hay over or even just stack it against? Even the shrubs or tall weeds of a fencerow might work. Just something so that you can loosely pile it *above* the ground, which not only gets you more air circulation but also reduces dew, which this time of year at least around here is a major factor delaying drying)

Good luck,

Pat, not even wanting to *think* about what the price of horse hay is going to be around here this year, what with the price of diesel and the dry 1st half of the year and such a wet 2nd half that I do not even know whether most farmers will *get* a second cutting, eep.

 

[Rosalind]

There are numerous things I could use as a hayrack in theory. However, nothing, not-a-darn-thing, is drying in this weather. I mean, last Sunday I put two hand-wash-only things out on the clothesline, right, and they were mostly (not completely) dry Thursday evening. Most of the clothes are getting dried in the dryer in August!!! It's that wet out, always. So I strongly suspect that if I stack it in a hayrack and wait, that sunny weather will likely never come. No, the rain gods will look down and laugh at me, then send a typhoon to the east coast over Labor Day.

The barn is extremely well-ventilated east-west. My only worry is that rodentia will find my hay nice and cozy and poo all over it, as I haven't gotten around to fixing the gable vents. This is possible, as I just went out and turned over a row to find a very angry shrew and a couple of field mice nesting in it already. Of course, the obvious solution is to fix the gable vents. I have the wood and hardware...guess I should stop posting and get to work...

 

[Rosalind]

You guys, it worked really well! This is, like, the best alfalfa-timothy hay ever! Seriously, the leaves are all nice and intact, not very strawy at all. It smells like cut grass and, well, there is a definite hint of attic and bat guano, but mostly a cut-grass smell. In fact I'd probably worry about it being too rich to feed to a goat or something used to getting a more twiggy diet. It's very dark green compared to regular hay though, possibly because sun-dried hay gets a bit bleached by the sun? Or maybe is cut when there's been less rain in the first place? Anyway, it was reasonably dry in about four days.

I put some in the chicken nest boxes and it's working well, of course. I think they are eating some.

I wonder if you were managing a regular hayfield, in a climate where you could expect three hay crops, would drying it quickly in a barn buy you enough time to ensure you'd get three crops instead of waiting for the right weather? And then sell it at a premium? I realize this obviously would not work for a larger operation, but if you had a small hobby farm...?