Posted by showcrop on May 20, 2016 at 05:03:50 from (75.68.77.41):
A post over on the Implement forum about chopping rained on hay got me thinking. Soon after I got started in hay in 1988, we got some hay rained on. My immediate thought is what are we going to do with it?? I talked to a dairy farmer friend, and he told me not to worry about it. We were making feed for sheep and he told me that it would still make perfectly good feed hay. This was around he 10-15th of June, so the grass was not mature yet. Well we dried it back down and baled it up, and got some tested, along with some from the same field that was baled the day before the rain. We found that our dairy farmer friend was correct, the loss in both protein and energy was only around ten percent, Now there are a number of variables in this, the most important being maturity at time of cut, another being how much had it dried down before getting rained on, and third and perhaps the one having the most effect is how long did it stay wet from the rain. A quick down-pour followed by quick dry down will have little effect but if a rainy stretch of five days keeps it wet, it will loose a lot of feed value. Another factor is who is going to use it. Horse people seem to think that it is impossible to get hay dry once it is rained on, so that it will mold in the bale after being put in the barn. You have to have trust with a horse customer built up over many years for them to accept hay that has been rained on. People with cattle or other animals are a lot more likely to be receptive to rained on hay. The greatest factor we know about hay is that if not cut before seed heads mature, it will lose a great part of its feed value, so it is better to cut it even if there is a chance of rain, than to let it turn into wood as it stands in the field.
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