Why are we baling our own hay?
We are real farmers now… Baling our own hay to feed our animals. There should be lots of extra hay that we can try to sell, too.
When we bought our property, it was all hay land. We arranged for a farmer to hay the land for the first couple of years.
Last year, there was a drought in our area. The farmer left us a couple of large round bales for our animals, but it was not enough to get us through the winter. We live in a hay field, and we were stuck searching for hay to purchase for our animals.
We had 6 baby goats born this spring, and we recently added horses to our farm We need a reliable supply of hay.
It was time to start baling our own hay.
We needed equipment.
We have a bush mower. It was purchased so that we can clear brush and do rough cut mowing around the house. It is not ideal for cutting hay, but it actually does a pretty good job.
We found a used 3 wheel rake on facebook market place. When you pull it behind the tractor, it flips the hay and leaves it in a nice windrow, ready for the baler.
The hardest thing to get was the Baler. Our tractor is small at 35 horsepower. It is not powerful enough to pull a square baler or a traditional round baler. While internet surfing, I came across some mini round balers. They make round bales that are only 27 inches long and about 20 inches in diameter. These bales weigh 50 to 75 lbs – similar in size to a small square bale.
The next challenge was finding somewhere local that sells the mini balers. We finally found Hillman Implements, which is located near us. They have mini balers and other equipment that is made in China. We purchased our mini baler and they delivered it to us.
Waiting for the sun
In order to make hay, we needed a window of at least 3 days without rain. The weather for the last month or so has not cooperated, with rain and lightning storms almost every day.
Finally we got a 3 day window and got ready to bale our own hay. I mowed a couple of small fields on Saturday night and Sunday morning, then we raked it on Sunday afternoon. On Monday evening, Ray Hillman came by to teach us how to operate the baler.
This is the first bale we made. I think it looks pretty good
Look at all the pretty little bales in the field.
Storing the newly baled hay
I hopped on my quad, pulling a little trailer, while my daughter finished baling. I thought I would be able to fit 2-3 bales on the little trailer – WRONG! These bales are heavier that I expected, I couldn’t even lift most of the bales.
I found a smaller bale, that we had wrapped early because we finished the area. With some maneuvering, I managed to leverage it into the wagon, and it filled the entire wagon.
Then I got the pick up truck, and drove around while Melissa picked up the bales and hefted them into the back of the truck. She is way stronger than me… We were able to fit 5 bales into the truck box at a time.
From the small areas that we hayed, we made 18 bales. Now that we know what we are doing, we can carry on baling our own hay. We will tackle a larger area of the hay field the next time we have a few sunny days in the forecast.
Our storage space in the barn will soon be full. We have another storage building that we will need to assemble.
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