Low Cost Hay Storage
and Feeding System
Jim Gerrish
As producers are out mowing and baling hay, it is time
to also be thinking about storage and feeding that hay. In
most parts of the Midwest, some quantity of hay is needed
almost every year. How much hay is actually needed is a key
question to consider. The Missouri Management Information
Record System indicates that the average beef producer feeds
hay for approximately 140 days each year. Weather records
for the past 21 years at FSRC indicate and average 37 day
snow cover with only about 7 days of snow deeper than 6
inches. Very clearly we don't need to feed hay because
everything is covered with snow. We have a great deal of
information about stockpiling tall fescue and grazing well
into January or even February but eventually we do find it
necessary to feed some hay.
Minimizing the amount of hay fed is a good management
strategy. A recent case study from Ohio State University
examined production and financial records from a number of
beef farms. Some of the farms made money and some lost
money. In looking for a common thread or a predictor of the
relative profitability of a cow-calf operation, the
investigators found that amount of hay fed was the best
common denominator. The more hay fed, the greater the
likelihood that the farm was losing money. The less hay fed,
the greater the likelihood that the farm was making money.
Several other states have reported similar findings. If we
are going to feed hay, we need to make it as least costly an
operation as possible. Let's look at minimizing storage and
feeding costs in a beef cattle operation.
Low Cost Storage
The vast majority of hay fed to beef cows in the
Midwest is in the form of large round bales of grass
dominant hay. The large round bale emerged in the early
1970's as the preferred hay package for two main reasons,
reduced labor requirements and the ability to store the bale
outdoors. However, much research was done in the 1970's and
early 1980's which reported dry matter losses of 25% to 40%
for outdoor stored bales. Almost immediately producers were
told to store hay in barns or cover bales with plastic or
tarps. We went through the gyrations of covering big
stacks, little stacks, and individual bales. The industry
developed bales sleeves and net wrap and other protective
coverings. We were doing a lot of things to make an
expensive, but frequently low value, product even more
costly. It was time to take a breath and think about what
we were doing. Let's think about why we had gotten where we
were.
Much of the hay storage work done in the last 25 years
was done with alfalfa hay. Why? Because that is the crop
most agronomists and engineers prefer to work with. It can
grow several crops in a year for replications and has a high
market value. What relevance does it have to most hay used
in beef cow systems? Very little. Most hay fed is grass
dominant which has very different water shedding
characteristics than does legume hay. Losses of 40% in big
bales of alfalfa are very common but exceedingly rare in
grass hay.
In those early years we were working with first and
second generation baler technology which did not
consistently produce bales of uniform shape and density.
Those bales were much more prone to spoilage. The third and
fourth generation balers we use today produce very uniform
bales that are much more weather resistant than the bales
of the 1970's.
Part of that changing technology also has to do with
how we tie bales off. I do not usually go into personal
reminiscing in these newsletters but in this case it makes a
very good example. From 1972 through 1978, I bales over
30,000 bales with a Vermeer 605C baler pulled with a cabless
tractor. A great deal of that hay was red clover on crop
rotation land in southern Illinois. The baler had a manual
rope control twine arm for applying twine to the bale. The
main goal of the operator in tying off a bale of red clover
is to get out of the dust cloud as quickly as possible.
Hence, we end up with twine spacing 8 to 12 inches apart
and produce an uneven bale surface that is prone to
spoilage. The modern baler has electric or hydraulic twine
tie and we use tractors with cabs making it very easy and
comfortable to make a uniform 4 inch twine spacing across
the bale. From work done at FSRC in the late 1980's, we
found that with hay that was approximately 30-40% legume and
60-70% grass, a twine tied bale with less than 4 inch twine
spacing had the same storage characteristics as net wrap
bales stored indoors or outdoors. In either case, storage
loss was consistently less than 4% total dry matter with no
difference in crude protein and ADF between the outer 2 inch
layer and the inner 18 inches.
The summary of this discussion is that whereas with
1970's technology it may have made economic sense to cover
bales or store them indoors, with 1990 baler technology a
twine tied bale left outdoors is not significantly different
from a bale stored indoors from a cow's perspective. Every
time we handle a large round bale of hay we incur about $2
equipment and labor cost. If we accept that large round
bales can be stored outdoors if properly tied, the need for
barn or plastic is eliminated and handling costs can be
greatly reduced by moving the bale only once between baling
and feeding. Remember the key issue. We are discussing a
grass dominant bale of uniform shape and a twine spacing of
less than 4 inches. If you are producing legume dominant
hay, it will still be advisable to store them inside or
under a temporary cover.
Low Cost Feeding
The best ways to reduce feeding costs are to minimize
bale handling and feeding waste. Continuing with the
discussion in the last section, if bales can be stored
outside with minimal storage loss then the storage site can
also be the feeding site. This is the basis of the space-bale
feeding system we have been using at FSRC for the past
4 winters. In this system, we move the bales immediately
after baling to the site where they will be fed. In a
rotational grazing system where we are cutting hay from
paddocks within the system, we will typically feed the hay
back on the same paddock where it was harvested. This keeps
soil nutrients on the same general area where they were
harvested from. If the hay is harvested from one area but
will be fed in another that will also work.
The actual feeding arrangement that we have used
consists of bales set on 20 to 25 ft centers in 1 to 6 rows
depending upon how many head are in the group. After the
bales are set, a temporary electric fence is used to exclude
the stock for the remainder of the grazing season. When hay
feeding begins, the appropriate number of bales are exposed
with ring feeders over them and the cattle are allowed
access. We generally like to figure 12 to 15 cows per ring,
depending upon cow and bale size. This number of cows will
usually consume a 1000 lb bale in 2 to 3 days. Hay wastage
will increase significantly if the cattle are allowed more
hay than they can readily consume in 2 to 3 days. I
personally prefer feeding new bales every other day. This
means that I prefer a 1000 lb bale to a 1500 lb bale. The
smaller bale means that you bale more of them, but feeding
waste is reduced. The argument can be made that not all of
the cattle need to be able to get to the feeder at the same
time and thus a 1500 lb bale can also be consumed in 2 days.
There is a considerable amount of research from around the
country that indicates that cow performance is not as good
where hay feeding space is limited compared to a situation
where all animals can access the hay at the same time.
Younger cows will consistently suffer if ring access is
limited. Another benefit to the shorter time spent feeding
each bale is that the trampling damage and mud development
is reduced.
The labor required for feeding bales this way is
significantly less than conventional feeding systems where
hay is hauled from a storage site to a feeding site. In the
space bale system actual winter feeding time for 6 bales is
typically around 10 minutes while feeding the bales from a
storage site located 1/4 mile away and using a 6-bale
trailer is 30 to 40 minutes. Obviously time is required at
baling time to set the bales but it is the same time which
would normally be used to move the bales to a storage site
and is significantly less when compared to a barn stacking
operation.
While any type of fencing may be used to protect the
bales from the cattle during the non-feeding and feeding
season, we have found poly-tape and step-in posts to be very
effective. The fence can be moved very quickly and is highly
visible to the livestock, as well as being very effective.
To use step-in post in frozen ground requires a post with a
fairly small diameter spike and a broad foot piece that
accommodates a snowy boot. For corners where a single post
not stuck all the way in frozen ground may not hold up, we
have made concrete corner post anchors. We make these by
slicing 5-gal buckets into 2 inch thick rings and using
these as concrete forms. A piece of 3/16 diameter tube set
in the center makes a hole for the step-in post. A square
of hog panel set in the concrete makes a nice handle.
A discussion of low quality hay may also be helpful.
Cattle will not clean up low quality hay fed in ring
feeders very well. The cattle don't perform well and you
are left with a mess to clean up behind them. Although, I
don't recommend unrolling ray as a preferred feeding method
due to the waste, it is probably the best method of feeding
low quality hay. This is particularly true if you hay some
thinner sods on low fertility sites. The wasted hay will
contribute to soil protection and nutrient replacement and
the seed normally found in low quality hay will help
establish vegetation on those sites. If hay is to be
unrolled, it should be fed on a daily basis as waste
increases almost exponentially as the quantity of hay fed
per cow exceeds their daily requirement.
Why discuss hay feeding in the July newsletter?
Because efficient management takes advance planning and
doesn't happen by accident.
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