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Was able to buy some beautiful grass hay this morning.


sheep_herder

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Usually feed 12-15 square bales a day, but this time of the year, I am usually forking hay from round bales to supplement what the sheep are getting from the pasture. Now I am only feeding them to animals I have fenced in smaller areas.  Would not even be looking, but I was not able to get the usual amount of 3rd cutting that I usually get due to autumn rains.  So my stack of small squares is getting small, and my usual supplier generally puts 1st cutting into large round bales.

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29 minutes ago, Airehead said:

Hire a couple 12 year old boys to haul them. 

Thought about that, but older, since the producer has a daughter that will be a senior this year.  She should know someone willing to help. I know them through taking photos at the team ropings and the fair.

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Remember, "when you see a bale of hay, make a wish and look away".  At least that's what my Grandmother would say when we were little.  Although I expect you'd spend a lot of your day "looking away". :nodhead:

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17 minutes ago, Kirby said:

Remember, "when you see a bale of hay, make a wish and look away".  At least that's what my Grandmother would say when we were little.  Although I expect you'd spend a lot of your day "looking away". :nodhead:

I wish it would pile itself neat and tight.

I wish I would find a nest of kittens hidden between bales.

I wish it would toss itself to the livestock and neatly hang the twine.

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2 hours ago, sheep_herder said:

I'll have to take a photo for Smudge.  I can get an additional 240 small square bales, but I get tired thinking about moving them home. It was put up without rain, and was stacked in a hay shed.

Mmmmm, I can smell it now..... ?

If I were close, I'd swing by and help. Seriously. I got no qualms with that sort of work.

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Will be cutting the last field of mixed alfalfa/grass first cutting hay this morning.  It is over ripe. Should have been cut 3 weeks  ago but we have had so much rain that we are way behind.  This will finish 200 acres of first cutting. The first we cut is now ready to cut the second time.  Much of the first cutting was chopped and bagged for haylage for the dairy cows. Most of our hay is usually baled in large round  5.5 x 4 ft bales that weight 1500 lbs. Only have about 100 of those so far this year.  Next cutting we hope to get the 400 to 500 quality small bales we use in the barn and at shows done. We have good pasture and aren't feeding much hay to the cows, sheep or horses right now.

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18 hours ago, sheep_herder said:

Usually feed 12-15 square bales a day, but this time of the year, I am usually forking hay from round bales to supplement what the sheep are getting from the pasture. Now I am only feeding them to animals I have fenced in smaller areas.  Would not even be looking, but I was not able to get the usual amount of 3rd cutting that I usually get due to autumn rains.  So my stack of small squares is getting small, and my usual supplier generally puts 1st cutting into large round bales.

Gooodness gracious! That's a lot of hay . . . lots of ravenous 4-legged's 

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With all the rain around here, hay is the only thing doing well.  To the point fields that are supposed to have crops in them right now look more like hay fields.

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I remember when I was a teenager, every once in while my dad and I would drive into town and "load up" on hay bales.  We could fit ten rectangular bales inside the '86 Plymouth Voyager (this predated the extended body) - this was for the one year or so we didn't have a pickup truck.

Now we buy bagged timothy hay for the rabbit.  I don't know what my parents paid for ten bales of hay, but compared to that, I don't want to know the unit price we're paying at PetSmart...

This is where we used to go to get hay - we'd back up to the barn in the background center.  It looks exactly as I remember it, from 30-plus years ago.

image.thumb.png.ef51b09a348c082561bfcfb9681656e0.png

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8 minutes ago, TrentonMakes said:

I remember when I was a teenager, every once in while my dad and I would drive into town and "load up" on hay bales.  We could fit ten rectangular bales inside the '86 Plymouth Voyager (this predated the extended body) - this was for the one year or so we didn't have a pickup truck.

Now we buy bagged timothy hay for the rabbit.  I don't know what my parents paid for ten bales of hay, but compared to that, I don't want to know the unit price we're paying at PetSmart...

My Guinea pigs prefer Orchard Grass Hay to Timothy.  I have to now order it all off of Amazon because the pet store by me that carried it closed. 

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27 minutes ago, Indy said:

My Guinea pigs prefer Orchard Grass Hay to Timothy.  I have to now order it all off of Amazon because the pet store by me that carried it closed. 

We generally have two brands of timothy hay available at the store - the rabbit likes one, but not the other.  (lately we've been ordering from "Chewy")

But then if we leave it laying around she'll eat the newspaper.... there's no accounting for taste.

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1 hour ago, Indy said:

My Guinea pigs prefer Orchard Grass Hay to Timothy.  I have to now order it all off of Amazon because the pet store by me that carried it closed. 

I saw some in Tractor Supply over the weekend.  It was in the equine section.  I thought of the thousands of bales I used to put up every summer as a teen and then thought "Timothy in a bag???"  I can't imaging 4 wagon loads of 'bags' of hay.

 

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5 minutes ago, Kzoo said:

I saw some in Tractor Supply over the weekend.  It was in the equine section.  I thought of the thousands of bales I used to put up every summer as a teen and then thought "Timothy in a bag???"  I can't imaging 4 wagon loads of 'bags' of hay. 

 

Would be a lot easier as it's not packed nearly as tight.  I could've loaded and unloaded those all day, not that I didn't with regular bales.

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14 minutes ago, Indy said:

Would be a lot easier as it's not packed nearly as tight.  I could've loaded and unloaded those all day, not that I didn't with regular bales.

I remember a load or 2 that were not stacked too tight and didn't make it back to the barn.  The farmer I worked for had his hay fields bout 3 miles a a few turns from his main farm.  I started with him pretty young with little instruction.   12 yo noob stacking 100 bales on a wagon my himself didn't always go so well.  When my little brother got big enough to pull a bale off the bailer he helped too.  Not much help.  Our goal was 400 bales min an afternoon.  We had 2 big barns filled by July 4th.  2nd and 3rd cuttings were chopped.

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50 minutes ago, Kzoo said:

I remember a load or 2 that were not stacked too tight and didn't make it back to the barn.  The farmer I worked for had his hay fields bout 3 miles a a few turns from his main farm.  I started with him pretty young with little instruction.   12 yo noob stacking 100 bales on a wagon my himself didn't always go so well.  When my little brother got big enough to pull a bale off the bailer he helped too.  Not much help.  Our goal was 400 bales min an afternoon.  We had 2 big barns filled by July 4th.  2nd and 3rd cuttings were chopped.

I baled with my uncle, he has a rule, "if you dump, you load it" as in the person pulling it from the field to the barn dumping it.  He's the only one who managed to dump a load pulling out of the field.  I was a smart ass from an early age, I sat in the truck and told him to have fun loading it again since he dumped it.  

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