Bale Wrapping

I cannot believe how fast time flies. Each week I vow I'm going to get my blog wrote before Sunday, then it NEVER happens. Where does the time go? This week has been an odds and ends week. I took a couple days off to spend with family. I think this week I'll focus on bale wrapping. Matt got started on this a couple years ago and loves the results.

Bale wrapping is beneficial and turns hay into haylage. The best type of hay to wrap is types of hay that are hard to get dry. For example, triticale, alfalfa and sudex. One mows, rakes, then bales them the same as brome or native. The difference is the time and moisture that you bale them. Usually, we mow and bale within 12 hours compared to the 24 hours for brome or native. Of course this all varies with weather conditions and heaviness of the hay, ect. When you dry bale hay you want it to be between 12-15% moisture level, when you wrap hay you want it more in the 30-50% range. There are hay moisture testers to show this information and a lot of balers now how moisture testers built in.

After baling it, it gets put through the wrapper. Each bale is wrapped with plastic through the bale wrapper. It takes about 30 seconds-1 minute per bale. The point of doing this is to lock the moisture in, but keep the oxygen out. Then the hay undergoes a fermentation process. It becomes haylage. It's very similar to silage, but with hay instead of corn or whatever else. Matt loves to wrap hay because it's much more palatable for the cows in the middle of winter than dry brome. The cattle absolutely LOVE eating it. When you are ready to feed it, you simply cut the plastic. Then we put ours through a haybuster. The haybuster mixes the hay so the cattle consume more of the feed and waste less of the hay. Hence, they use less hay, which means less land to grow hay. Producers try to use their resources in the most efficient manner possible. 

A lot more producers are interested in doing this and there are few hay wrappers in our area so Matt gets lots of call to do custom bale wrapping. This is a picture of some of the wrapping we did for some friends of ours. You can see in the background the tractor and trailer picking the bales out of the field and the white row of hay is the hay that has been wrapped and the red machine is the actual hay wrapper. It's a pretty neat experience...the first time. It gets old fast when you stand there and watch it for hours on end. 

If you have any questions, I would LOVE to answer them. (Or in reality, have Matt answer them). That's kind of the overview of hay wrapping. Please, please, please, let me know if you have any questions. 

I'm looking forward to talking to a few of the FFA Chapters in our area this week about my blog and ag advocacy. I hope you all have a great week!!