Talk:Hay

Haylage in the US

Is there a citation for haylage being more common in Europe than the US? At least anecdotally here in northern New England haylage is very common, though difficult to compare to traditional baling since the wrapped bales get left stacked visibly outside while other hay gets stored out of sight. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vttale (talk • contribs) 15:17, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

I can't say if there are any statistics one way or the other. However, in my entire life, I've never seen a haylage bale anywhere west of the Mississippi and we'd fear to feed it for worry about botulism. If there are stats in either direction, it would be interesting to see them. Montanabw^(talk) 19:22, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

History section

I think that this section should probably be properly wikified (instead of consisting out of block quotes). The reference from which was cited could then be listed in references as "Some of this article comes from the public domain resource [...]". —Michiel Sikma (Kijken maar niet aanraken) 09:30, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

As far as I know hay was not known to the Romans. Who invented/discovered it? How did its use spread around the world. It must have made a tremendous difference to farming systems. Does anyone know anything about this.Frank.corr 07:40, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Uses

I am going to move the information on hay making out of Uses and in to Hay Making. Makes it easier for the reader to keep 'uses' seperate from the 'how to' part. wagors 16:38, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

I added a piquant fact or two known only to Ghengis Khan. You all can thank me later. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cold' the clammy cement (talk • contribs) 20:08, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Making Hay

Past tense used in this section makes it sound like no one makes hay anymore. Also very industrial country centric as hay is still gathered by hand in some parts of the world. Will come back later and see if there is something I can do. wagors 16:52, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Straw, not Hay

Please remove all the images from the article that show Straw (dry stalk of cereal plants), and no hay (dry grass). This should be featured? You geeks. --Tom 17:28, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

• Agreed. I removed one picture actually labeled as straw. I'm no farmer, tho, so I can't be certain that some of the pictures here labeled "hay" aren't actually straw also. --Tysto 22:06, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

The picture showing 'hay left out until Autumn' looks like straw baled from a cereal crop the year before to me. The area looks to have a full years weed growth (set aside maybe?) I'm 90% certain not hay anyway.4wd (talk) 21:57, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

It's round bales laying in grass, not in a fallow field, and one sees a lot of this grungy-looking stuff that's well over a year old. I think it's hay, (the photo uploader identiied it as hay, not that this is any guaratee) but the real point is that it's what it looks like when it's rotten. I'll tweak the caption some to indicate age, but yes, I have seen hay that looks like this ;-P. Montanabw^(talk) 01:43, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

It's hay (probably weedy, but not straw) that has not been removed from the field. There are a couple of bales on the right of the picture that are probably over a year old, but based on the shape of the bales the others are not much over a month old. They sag around the edges with more time. If it's gotten some rain on it hay turns brown pretty fast. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.158.66.149 (talk) 22:35, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Bad Edit?

Up to the end of the 19th century, grass and clover were not often grown together because crops were rotated.

An annon user known for other spamming activities modified this line to change the date range. It MAY be a valid edit, in which case I just changed it back to the wrong version. Can someone who knows better verify it and remove the note? --Mdwyer 04:15, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Mdwyer, you are correct, that change was deliberate vandalism. The current revert is correct to the best of my knowledge (or at least was what was there before I made the change). I've removed the citation needed tag, since it wasn't there before I untruthed the article, and I assume it doesn't need to be there now that it's been reverted. 40.0.40.10 05:01, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

A few observations on crop rotation regarding hay: These are typically perennial crops which grow from early spring until autumn without annual planting, thus crop rotation is not typical. The line between hay and straw can sometimes be defined by the maturity of the plants. Annual grasses that are harvested as hay may, but do not always include seed heads. Many plants are more nutritious when 'greener,' that is, wetter and earlier in the growing season. Harvesting later will include more seed heads, which may be the goal of selecting such a harvest time. For a variety of reasons, grain crops such as wheat, barley, rye, and oats are often harvested as hay well before seed maturity. When the seed heads are mature, the stem and leaves are dried and are called straw--and have much reduced nutritional value. Also, as some grain plants mature, the sexual structures, particularly the 'beards' are very stiff and pointed or prickly and can be damaging to the eyes of livestock.Homebuilding (talk) 18:36, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Changes made 30-Sep-2006

A round bale which sheep have partially eaten

I've just expanded the article a little, covering spontaneous combustion and the move from small bales to large bales.

Here's a photo I took a few hours ago, which shows the dense hay in the middle of a large round bale. Is it worth adding this photo to the article? Cheers, CWC(talk) 14:50, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

It's a very nice photo. Feel free to add it, I'd say. There isn't really a need to ask. I think it would look even better in a different light, by the way, perhaps in the evening or morning so that it's possible to see the shape of the hole a bit better. —msikma <user_talk:msikma> 09:53, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip. I'll try to get a better photo. Cheers, CWC(talk) 10:55, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

I've finally got around to uploading a better photo and adding to the article. CWC(talk) 15:55, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Images etc, May 2007

My recent edit was just an experiment, but seems to have set of a flurry of changes. Thanks, Montanabw, for greatly improving on what I did. Thanks too to user:Sirex98 for adding that great photo.

As user:Montanabw pointed out in an edit summary, it's quite OK to alternate images to the left and right. Does anyone want to try it?

One side comment: Montanabw captioned the photo I took as "Poor quality hay, bleached from weather or harvested late, of low nutritive value, but adequate for some animals if fed free-choice, as it is dry and not spoiled". But around here, that counts as good quality hay! (Some locals grow lucerne hay under center pivots, but most hay comes from non-irrigated land. Except for superfine woolgrowers, Australian farmers rarely keep stock indoors, since they don't have to worry about snow. So hay is basically used only as supplemental feed.)

Which illustrates one reason Wikipedia is weak on agricultural topics: it's hard to write good articles when there's so much variation from place to place. Cheers, CWC 18:55, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

I did a little tweaking and did once again put the round bale as poor-quality hay. However I do agree that the point is well-taken that there are tremendous regional differences...and in some cases, feeding large quanties of poor forage is done purposely, for example, to keep a bored horse from chewing wood or bolting its feed. Content overall is getting there, but the article probably needs some boldness to restructure and rearrange it totally; it looks put together by committee, in the bad sense. But it isn't horrible, either. There's worse in Wikipedia. FYI, another way to calculate hay in the small square bales is that a ton (US) of hay occupies cubic space that is about 10' x 10' x 10' I can find a reference if we care deeply enough about putting it in there (source is Cherry Hill's Horsekeeping book) Montanabw 04:27, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, Montanabw

Thank you, Montanabw (talk · contribs), for your recent edits to this article. Great work! Cheers, CWC 14:42, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Aw shucks, be sure to check for typos, I usually have a trail of them... and if you Aussies have different words for stuff like swathers, balers, etc., we might be able to have some fun with terminology. Montanabw 17:35, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

You have a strange idea of fun ... ;-). AFAICT, the only difference is that we call swathers "windrowers" (as in 'machines that make windrows', not machines that row the wind ...).

Might be worth adding a few things like "Swather (USA) or Windrower (AU) where appropriate. Go for it!Montanabw

How to calculate mass of hay

User 142.161.225.123 (talk · contribs) recently added this to the article:

To find the number of tons of hay in a stack

Multiply the overthrow (the distance from the ground on one side over the top of the stack to the ground on the other side) by the length, by the width (all in feet); multiply by 3; divide by 10 and then divide by 500 to 600, depending upon the length of time the hay has been in the stack.

This seems like an interesting piece of historic lore, but we'd need a citation. Can anyone help? Thanks, CWC 10:41, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

If a useful formula can be found, and this is very possible, the most important factor is the type of hay that is the point of the discussion. For example, a yellow straw bale (made by the traditional square baler that was most common in the 1950s through the 1980s) might weigh between 50 and 60 pounds. The same sized alfalfa hay bale could weigh nearly twice as much. Of course, the preparation of the hay is extremely important as well. The composition of the haystack is extremely important as loose hay in a haystack can easily weigh only a fifth that of mechanically compressed bales, whether round or square.Homebuilding (talk) 18:54, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Tossing cyclopedia section

I was bold today and tossed out the entire 1881 Cyclopaedia section. It is internally contradictory, either repeats what is in the history or else is just archaic and not of a lot of use here. If anyone is enamored of it however, or wants excerpts to put back into the article, here is what I cut in its entirety. Montanabw 04:15, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Be bold is one of the WKPD slogans! I love being bold. I just hate it when it happens to me, on work i've just spent 2 hours doing!!OnBeyondZebrax (talk) 20:04, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

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From the 1881 Household Cyclopedia

"Instead of allowing the hay to lie, as usual in most places, for some days in the swath after it is cut, never cut hay but when the grass is quite dry, and then make the gatherers follow close upon the cutters: put it up immediately into small cocks about three feet high each, and of as small a diameter as they can be made to stand with; always giving each of them a slight kind of thatching, by drawing a few handsful of the hay from the bottom of the cock all round and laying it lightly upon the top, with one of the ends hanging downwards. This is done with the utmost ease and expedition; and when once in that state the hay is, in a great measure, out of danger; for unless a violent wind should arise immediately after the cocks are put up, nothing else can hurt the hay; as no rain, however violent, can penetrate into these cocks but for a very little way; and if they are dry put up they never sit together so closely as to heat, although they acquire, in a day or two, such a degree of firmness as to be in no danger of being overturned by wind after that time, unless it blows a hurricane.

"In these cocks allow the hay to remain until upon inspection, the farmer judges it will keep in pretty large tramp-cocks (which is usually in a week or two, according as the weather is more or less favorable), when two men, each with a long-pronged pitchfork, lift up one of these small cocks between them with the greatest ease, and carry them one after another to the place where the tramp cock is to be built, and in this manner proceed over the field till the whole is finished.

"ANOTHER METHOD:

"The clover is cut, and after it has lain four or five days in the swath, till it is sufficiently dry, the haymaker, with a rake, rolls up a sufficient quantity to form a ripple, which is set up in the form of a cone. Taking a few of the longest straws he twists them round the top, which forms the point of the cone, keeps the ripple compact, and shoots off the rain. In taking up the clover from the swath and forming the ripple, it is necessary to keep the upper or dry part inwards: by that means it is much sooner dry, and in a fit state for the stack. It is generally necessary for clover to remain five or six days in the ripple before it is put into the stack, but that depends on the state of the weather. There is no occasion to untie the ripples. The method of rippling is not so expensive as cocking; it is much superior both in wet and dry seasons—not so liable to be injured by the wet—much sooner dry, and of course of a better quality and more nourishing for cattle. Each ripple will weigh, when dry, about four or five pounds. They should not be made too large. Except where meadow grass is very long it would not be practicable to ripple it. The practice of rippling is simple, attended with little trouble or expense, and whenever tried will recommend itself:

"Grass, when cut for hay, ought to be quickly raked, in order that its powers may neither be exhausted by the sun nor dissipated by the air. In the first stage small cocks are preferable, and on after days these may be gathered into large ones or hand-ricks, by which method the hay is equally made and properly sweetened. After standing eight or ten days in these ricks, according to the nature of the weather, hay may be carted home and built in stacks of sufficient size for standing through the winter months."

Fresh Image

In the second image down, barley has been recently substituted for alfalfa, but the caption still reads newly baled which would refer to a field scene, not the shed. The alfalfa before was a perfect example of rounded bales whereas the barley appears to be variously cured or mixed grasses. - Athrash | ^Talk 20:09, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

I'll look at that and see what's going on. I saw the substitute, didn't notice the caption wasn't changed. Montanabw^(talk) 04:00, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Spontaneous Combustion

Regarding this reversion [1] - The source listed in reference 7 doesn't state *anything* anymore, as that linked page no longer exists. I was incorporating information found lower in the page (in the Section "Safety issues"), as I though a statement saying that drier hay has a lower risk of burning was counter intuitive and needed explaining. But on further review, it appears that the source given there (#12) doesn't exit anymore either. -- 128.104.112.114 (talk) 16:35, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Looks like MSU Extension redid their web site. I will attempt to find the article and fix the link. I see your point that it seems counterintuitive ... but "rot" isn't really it, it's fermentation, which may eventually lead to rot, but when haystacks burst into flame, it's usually early on, within hours or days of being put into a stack, long before rot. Hay that just gets wet on top from weather after it's stacked isn't as big a problem as hay baled too wet... I don't have a problem tweaking the language a little, just don't put it as if it's part of the footnote. Montanabw^(talk) 05:17, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Wrap(ping)!

There seems to be a degree of confusion about wrapping bales with plastic film as in the silage bale picture and using netwrap instead of twine to hold the outer layers of a round bale in place. The netwrap is increasingly popular as much as anything because it speeds the final stage of round bale making which with twine requires many revolutions of the bale. Net wrap only needs go around three or four turns.
There's very little evidence or claim made that netwrap 'repells moisture'. It may keep the outer layer somewhat more compressed which might enhance the self thatching effect.
I changed the caption on the picture but haven't made changes to the main text.
A little caution may be needed in this due to different experiences dependant on climate variation - but the above is my experience in the UK. we are in a dry area where hay is still quite widely made as well as silage (clamps and bales) - but annual rainfall is such that hay cannot be left outside without considreable spoilage of outer layers. 4wd (talk) 21:49, 3 July 2009 (UTC) 3rd July 2009

Hm. Regional differences, yes. Out here, (Western USA) there is a very fine wrap sometimes used OVER twine that sheds a bit of moisture, used for hay stored outside. It wouldn 't hold the bale itself at all, too flimsy. It is not waterproof, but it slows down rot a bit, especially here where it is quite dry and ground moisture is probably bigger problem for spoilage than what falls out of the sky. Here, twine is used, multiple strands, not many times around. I haven't seen net as a wrap. Yes, problem for sure is that there is such worldwide variation. I suppose careful captioning is in order, for sure. Montanabw^(talk) 01:49, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Terminology and nutrition

(Continued from Montanabw's talk page.)

Although it is not widely understood, grasses are flowering plants, and, as such, have flowers and fruits. The flowers are tiny, mostly hidden by bracts, and without petals. A grass grain is the fruit.

All this relates to hay because the same factors affect the nutritional value of grass hay that affect legume hay: the distribution of nutrients in different parts of the plant at different stages of growth. Early in the growing season, the leaves are nutrient-rich, because they are active sites of photosynthesis. As the season progresses, nutrients move to the developing flowers and then fruits, and in perennial plants to the roots to support the next year's crop of leaves.

Straw comes from the end-point of the process: all the nutrients have moved into the grain, which was harvested, and the remainder of the plant contains only those nutrients that couldn't be relocated, primarily the cellulose of the cell walls. Late-season hay harvests approach the point of being "straw + grain", with a very different proportion of nutrients, and with less nutrients overall (energy is expended by the plant in making the grain). I'm not familiar with the literature of hay nutrition, but I expect it could all be evaluated in this context.--Curtis Clark (talk) 15:11, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

I substituted fiber for empty calories in the section on the poor nutritional quality of straw, because it is the fiber that would give animals the sense of fullness. I thought in this context the empty calories link would likely be confusing because its article refers almost entirely to human nutrition, where the term refers to high energy content food with few other nutrients besides calories. Straw by contrast consists almost entirely of dietary fiber, and though not indigestible to ruminants, is so hard to digest that they get little benefit from it except a sense of fullness and, in cold weather, the heat of its fermentation in their stomachs.CharlesHBennett (talk) 20:43, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough. Of course, I do sometimes refer to cheap grain as "horse beer!" LOL! Montanabw^(talk) 00:53, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Proper Name

What do they call hay that is stacked in a barn(small bails)Is it Hay Mound? or hay Mow? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.44.136.113 (talk) 09:01, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Haystack, at least where I live (American west). Doesn't matter if inside or out. A Haymow is a loft in a barn where hay is stored. A Hay mound implies unbaled hay. May be other names elsewhere. Montanabw^(talk) 18:52, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

"Stack" also typically used in UK for external unprotected structure. Otherwise, it's hay in a hay-barn. Round bales don't really "stack" as well as rectangular ones, of course. ([2]) Although we also had this guy back in the 1980s. Martinevans123 (talk) 23:08, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Safer Hay Handling Equipment Design

Many farm operations involve only a single person and managing a single 50 to 90 pound hay bale is relatively safe for one person. However, large round bales weighing 800 to 900 pounds are now the dominant form of hay harvesting in mechanized parts of the world. Lifting the heavy cylindrical bales with a tractor front end loader has proven to be unsafe as bales rolling from the loader is not infrequent. Farm tractors are also slower than road traffic and are generally less safe for longer distance hay moving. Small farm pickup trucks are commonly modified to convey a single bale by means of penetrating the center of a bale with a four foot spike. The spike hydraulically tilts the bale forward and up to a safe attitude that allows secure public road transport above 40 miles per hour.

Photo of pickup truck bale lifting mechanism needed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Homebuilding (talk • contribs) 19:23, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

LOL, I never have my camera handy when I see one driving by! Montanabw^(talk) 18:39, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Fatal accidents with hay bales

How frequent are fatal accidents with hay bales? Does their (apparent) relative scarcity make any individual case any more or less "trivial". I would guess that victims' families would not regard these events as trivial. Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 19:14, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Well, if you had read the paragraph to the end, you would note a statistic of 74 deaths in a six year period. I think more than 10 per year, given that the people at risk are a small percentage of the population to start with, is pretty significant. Thus, once you start providing case reports, or making value judgements that one accident is worse than another, the list will quickly escalate. Now, if someone wanted to start a List of people killed in hay-stacking accidents or something like that, I have no problem with doing so. It's the "laundry list" problem here that I hope to avoid. Montanabw^(talk) 20:47, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

sorry dude, fell out the stack 'afore had gotten to the bottom... Or even List of people killed in US hay-stacking accidents? Can't wait to see User:Red Pike of Doom get his fork into that one.... But know what you mean. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:47, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Poling

This content on "Poling" was added, but then deleted because it is unsourced and regionally limited. However, to give the material a chance to find a source, I have relocated the "poling" paragraphs here, in the hopes that someone can find a reliable reference:

Before balers and into the 1960's, some farmers in Manitoba "stacked" the hay in the same field it was grown, and built these stacks by "poling" The hay was cut with a horse drawn mower, sun dried, then first raked into "windrows" or winrows, and then cross raked into "coils". These coils would then be "dragged" together to form a stack by "poling". The "POLE" is a 16 foot 8x8 timber with a 20 foot chain attached at both ends of the timber each running to a team of horses controlled by very long leather lines held by two men --one at each end of the pole.

The coils of hay would be collected by dragging this pole from coil to coil accumulating sufficient hay to form the bottom layer of the haystack. A second layer would be accumulated in the same fashion but with planks forming a ramp, this second layer would be slid on top of the first forming this mound of about 10 feet deep, maybe 15 feet long by about 12 feet wide. This stack would be lengthened by subsequent collection of coils in the same manner. the Stack would be "topped" by hand/hayfork to a mound form to help shed rain.

Source material

Good info on the sizes and weights of different types of hay bales and other ways hay can be stored. http://www.thehorse.com/articles/32068/digesting-different-hay-forms

More here: http://www.thehorse.com/articles/32068/digesting-different-hay-forms?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=nutrition&utm_campaign=08-28-2017

Endophytes

Montanabw thinks I reverted twice, but I didn't.see this edit summary I added content, which I partially reverted (once) to correct the "bad form" that you pointed out. Also I didn't remove a footnote: I merely moved the whole text, footnote included, from Composition to Safety issues, where it turns out the fescue endophyte mentioned by 24.220.222.246 was already discussed, though not clearly.

I don't think we should have information repeated in Composition and Safety issues.

What to do next?

--Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 20:34, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

I put the better material in a logical place, the trick now is to look at the overall article and figure out how to best get rid of the redundant material, it's important to keep the better source - or maybe both sources. Give me a couple days to get to it and if I don't fix it by Monday, ping me here and remind me. Montanabw^(talk) 09:22, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Grass sicknesses

If we want to link to conditions related to eating fresh grass, I think that it is WP:UNDUE weight to list them in the main article body text, and not helpful to list only a single example. A better approach would to be to create an efn with the major conditions listed that way. Montanabw^(talk) 22:34, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Haystack

Why was Haystack deleted and redirected to Hay? It looks like a decent article, with useful information (which was not included into Hay). Don't you think it should be restored? Thanks. Zgaba (talk) 05:46, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Not necessarily. Most of the needed info was incorporated with the merge, which was... 7 years ago. Montanabw^(talk) 07:08, 30 April 2020 (UTC)