How big the barn for how many bales of hay

I saw a formula somewhere to determine how much space bales of hay would take up. 14x16x32? or is it 16x18x36? What is the common size on a 24T Deere baler anyways? Then you figure out the volume of each bale and then devide it in to the volume of the barn I guess. Is there a rule of thumb of this?
Merry Christmas!

How much hay do you want to store/ how many animals are you feeding?
The bigger bale you mentioned is about 5.5 cu ft so, a place 10x10 and 8ft tall SHOULD hold 140 +/- a couple bales. What if a bale is looser than the others? What if you don't get everything crammed in good and snug? What if you get a nice place laid out and increase your animals? Etc, Etc, Etc???
Do you plan on having easy access to the area with a tractor? Maybe round or big squares are a better option for you. We buy our hay and switched to big rounds last year and wonder why we didn't do it 10 years ago.

Dave

I'm looking at how to store my hay if it dosn't sell. I have two good size barns and need to figure out which one to use for storage. I'm looking at 30 acres of hay to store.

I don't know how many bales to expect from 30 acres, but you can measure your barns and figure your bales.

Good Luck,


Dave

If your hay makes a ton per acre that's aproximately 950 65# bales. 1000 will easily fit in an area 30x20x12.

I've found that a ton of tightly wrapped bales about 50 pounds each will take up 200 CUFT.
Does this sound about right? It comes out right mathmatically but in real life?

You are correct! It works out.
Can a guy stack hay that high though? Elevator?

The 24T makes the 14" x16" bales (measure the height and width of your bale chamber). The length is adjustable with the setting on your star wheel. As we had a #30 thrower on the 24T, we would try to set the bale length at 36" to 39." When baled, they would weigh about 55 to 60 lbs and eventually dry down to about 50 lbs. A good strong first cutting field would yield 125 to 150 bales per acre (for the 3 cuttings). We fertilize our hay fields and have pretty good rain. A tired grass field with no fertilizer might produce 40 to 50 bales/year.

The post just below by J states 950 bales = 1 ton. That is either a typo or math error. If your bales average the 50 lb wgt, then 50 X 40 bales = 2,000 lbs = 1 ton. I usually have 120 to 140 bales on a thrower wagon, a little over 3 ton.

To do your calculation, you need to know the productivity of your fields, and the size of your bales.

If you are storing bales to later sell, then stack them on their side, with the strings going around the 4 sides. Do not stack them with strings on top/bottom of bale. Reason: Hay will shrink as it dries (stem diameter shrinks a bit, length stays same), and with the weight of 10 to 15 layers deep, the bales will be significantly squished, making for loose strings and a very soft bale. Customers do not like shrinky looking bales. If you stack them on edge, any compaction from weight above will make an even tighter bale. Customer thinks they are getting a better product for their money. Besides, bales stacked on edge do not have strings as easily available to mice, and the pile has much less shifting from drying. In your own barn, stack them any way you want to.

To have a barn that can store 30 acres of hay with 3 cuttings, that needs a pretty big barn. For us that would be 4,000 to 4,500 bales of grass mix horse hay. We use an electric elevator to lift the bales up to the higher layers. We will work without the bale elevator for the first 5 or 6 layers, then get the elevator for everything above that. We stack some barns as high as 20 ft, but prefer not to go above 14 ft. Any higher is just too much work and dangerous if the pile begins to give way.

Good luck in your next hay season.

Paul in MN

A standard 2 string baler is 14x16x your prefered length. We make them in the 40" area and slightly longer for straw but we'll assume their 36" bales for this.
14"/12"=1.16' 16"/12"=1.33' 3' for length. 1.16'x1.33'x3'=4.6284'cubed per bale. Now lets say you have a barn that is 30x30x12 and lets assume you can fill it right up

30'x12"=360" 360"/16"=22.5 so 22 bale across the the bottom by 360"/36"=10 so you can fit 220 per layer 12'x12"=144" 144"/14=10.2857 or 10 bales high so you have a total of 2200 bales. If you were to simply go 30'x30'x12' you would end up with 10800' cubed divided by 4.6284= 2333 bales so your off by 133 bales. If you do it the accurate way then you don't need to figure out the volume of the bale because it don't matter.

I didn't do the math,I just was going by the area needed to stack that much hay with my stackwagon. granted with a stackwagon the stack may not be quite as tight, so if you're stacking by hand you might get more in that area. as far as stacking that high, it is only 8 teirs high, that's not much. you could go 15 or 20 with an elevator,although you would need to build the stack right and it's probably best not to have a stack that's higher than it is wide. a point of clarification, in my earlier post i said one ton per acre would equal aprox. 950 65# bales. that would be the total production off of your 30 acres, not 950 bales per acre. I usually figure 31 or 32 bales per ton.

Thanks for the insite Paul, you made good points!
A forum like this can be a wealth of information, and allow fewer mistakes by learning from others! Thanks for the time you put in to this answer. Thanks also to everyone else who relied, I appreciate it!