(Always figure your livestock nutritional needs on a dry basis for calculation purposes).ĭiverging from the animal requirements, we will return to the issues of making hay. ![]() A wrapped wet bale of baleage, which contains the same amount of nutrients as the dry round bale, but has a lot more water in it, can weigh 1200 pounds. ![]() dry round bale weighs just less than 700 pounds. Typical small square bales weigh about 35-40 pounds each. per ton = 72 tons of hay needed for the winter season. Here’s the math: (12 x 3) x (20) x (a 200 day feeding season) /2000 lbs. For planning purposes, let’s say that you have a 20 cow beef herd. Then take your grand total, and divide by 2,000 to get the number of tons that you may need. beef cow will need 36 pounds of dry hay a day you can extrapolate this figure for all ruminant animals for planning purposes. So how much hay will you need? An easy thumb rule to follow is that for every 100 pounds of live animal body weight you will need about 3 pounds of dry hay per day. You will rotationally graze your animals for between 5 and 6 months of the year, and the forages that you need to acquire will be for the winter, or non-grazing months, which in many parts of the northeast seems to last eternally, for upwards of seven months out of the year. You have not decided yet whether to make small square bales, or make large round or square bales, or even wrapped baleage. Perhaps you do have some family help that could be used for the haying process. You may work off the farm for a significant amount of hours, and may only have limited amounts of time to actually make hay in a timely manner. You do have a certain amount of land on your property that does grow hay crops on it, and someone will need to do the haying. You do not have huge amounts of money in reserve to finance the purchase and maintenance of all kinds of haying equipment. You may be a new or beginning farmer and have decided to get livestock on your farm, and you need to figure out how to provide good quality feed for them. The very title of this publication “Small Farm Quarterly” implies a smaller agricultural business that does not generate huge cash flows, such as the typical commercial dairy farm we see all over the Northeast. I am also going to make some assumptions about the readers who would most benefit from this discussion. I will however, present to you some of the challenging requirements needed to successfully make hay, with its concomitantly huge amounts of time, money, cropping needs, and machinery procurement and maintenance. First off, I am going to state unequivocally that there is no correct “yes or no” answer, and your conclusions need to be made for your own specific situation. The baler is easy to operate and its simple design/constructions allows most buyers to be able to start performance baling within a few hours.As the haying season winds down across the northeast, I am left to ponder the eternal question should I keep on trying to make hay for my livestock every year, or buy it? Well, “the devil is in the details”, as the old saying goes. ![]() There are many sustainable and growing retail markets for hay and the others are excellent for cattle fodder, mulch and beds for box and mushroom farming, paper pulp and power generation. The Farm-Maxx Hay Baler helps farmers, ranchers, convert hay, straw, pine needles, mowing and harvest residue into stalks into a marketable product to generate income! ![]() Hay, straw, forage & even pine straw are no problem for this machine. This makes these twine balers perfect for the small farmer in a hurry. The superior design and simple plug & play, hook up with no messy hydraulic hoses. Farm-Maxx Mini Round Hay Baler Model FMRB-330įMRB-330 Round Balers feature robust construction for years of trouble free baling.
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