The big round bales have been here for a while, but having some small squares stored in the barn is never a bad thing. Especially given how cold the weather has turned this fall! We stacked 60 up in the loft this summer, and another 200 will be joining them on Saturday. Really nice grass hay, averaging about 77 lbs. a bale, and decently priced, too.
A bit of cushion if winter hangs around into spring.
One of the guys at work puts it up, and he does a fabulous job - nice, tight, evenly packed, sweet smelling bales, all stored under cover. The horses loved the ones I bought from him last year. Not to mention how super-convenient it is to have to-work delivery - last year I only got 50 bales, so I just picked it up in the horse trailer. This time since with the larger amount, he loaded it (he has a bale mover attachment for his skidsteer that will grab 12 bales at a time - and boy howdy, would I love one of those!) onto his big flatbed and pulled the trailer in to work. Much easier to just hook on and drag it home from there.
He ran the whole shebang across the scale on the way into town: his truck (1 ton Dodge dually, same as ours) & loaded trailer weighed in at upwards of 33,000 lbs. Which was kind of fun to pull. I haven't driven with a load that heavy on before.
Out of curiosity, what's hay running in your neck of the woods? We paid $50 per net-wrapped, big rounds of prairie/mixed grass hay - not sure what they weigh in at, but I'm guessing somewhere in the 900-1100 lb. range based on how tight they're baled & how hard the skidsteer works to move them. That's about average for here. The small squares were $4.50 a bale, which again is about average based on what's listed on the HayExchange for Kansas ($3.75-$5.00/bale for grass hay).
(Stay tuned for further adventures as we actually get the bales stacked in the loft!)
2 comments:
Never heard of a bale mover like that but I imagine it would be worth its weight in gold! 12 at a time?! WOW!
We got 410 bales free from some friends who no longer have horses but still have their hay field - only paid for twine and gas. So not sure how much the small bales are going for. Our hay guy down the road tho, the sells the big 8x4 squares that are approximately 1000 for 85 each last I heard.
Good luck getting them all tucked away in the loft. That's always hard work.
That's a bargain! We did manage to get everything up, and boy are my hands sore - everything else is just letting me know I did more than usual, lol!
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