Re: Pallets and square bales hay

Posted by modirt on February 10, 2019 at 04:41:36 from (199.187.163.74):

In Reply to: Pallets and square bales hay posted by GEO-TH, In on February 08, 2019 at 03:41:49:

Modirt, have you gotten out of this whether the question is about unloading a delivery? or daily feeding? or both?

Nope....I don't think it was ever made clear, but it sounded like he was thinking to load bales on pallets at the source, then unload and stack bales in the barn with a tractor using a front end loader with pallet forks. Presumably, that would be stacking them on the ground in the center alley of this 100 year old barn. Not sure how they were going to be fed, but perhaps off these pallets. In our area, 400 bales of hay would get about 6 to 8 horses through the winter months.

Have been thinking about it, however, and if he is feeding 400 bales a year, that is a lot of pallets to be moving around. If standard pallets, and you could get 10 bales to stay put, that is still about 40+ pallets. Might be doable. If they were bound together, not much different than moving the smaller big round bales.

Part of my interest in this is I'm selling all my hay to horse hay customers, one of which is a 70+ year old widow down the road, plus several other ladies in the area, all of which hand me $100 bills or good checks upon delivery. One thing they all have in common is the inability to handle even these small square bales if they are too heavy. In that, they are no different than a big guy with a bad back.

So I'm always interested in ways to make it easy on them if it means value added to me. One hinted she might pay as much for a 40 pound bale as one weighing 50 pounds, since it was easier for her to handle a 40 pound bale. Hmmm.....that sounds like a way to increase profits just by packaging.

Until I got involved, I never paid much attention to the barns they were building to house these horses. Most of them are modified metal clad pole barns, with hay stored inside at ground level, which creates two hay feeding problems for them. Hay is stored inside at ground level, meaning they have to isolate their high dollar hay from the ground to avoid spoilage, then have to move it horizontally to feed it.

I'm thinking they would all be better off building well ventilated, two story loft barns to store the hay in a high and dry, well ventilated loft, then to feed it, simply drop it down chutes into a hay manger in each stall.

But that still leaves the daily mucking chores if they keep their nags in box stalls, plus it is unreal how much condensation shows up once horses are moved indoors and housed in box stalls. With an uninsulated, metal clad building, there are many, many days when it will be raining inside the building from all the moisture condensation. There goes your hay again.

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