165 bales on the cart...

[altivo]

165 bales!
Take some down and stack them around,
155 bales on the cart.

We got 165 bales yesterday afternoon, and stacked them all neatly before having dinner (late.) It took the two of us 90 minutes to get the wagon unloaded, the hay arranged tidily in the barn, sweep up the mess, and roll the wagon back out into the lane so Jeff can pick it up when he brings the next one on Wednesday.

The hay is nice for first cutting. Sometimes the first cut is coarse and stemmy, especially if there has been a lot of rain as this year, but this has a lot of fine grass and was pretty well dried already. Drying is essential. When you stack wet hay tightly, it builds up internal heat that can get high enough to produce spontaneous combustion.

This is about 20% of what we need to last until this time next year, 25% at the most. Much to my relief, the price is not up yet. We paid the same per bale for this load as we did for the last load we received in 2007. I suspect we are getting a break on the price because we've been regular customers for almost ten years, though.

Farrier visit today, too, so all the horses got groomed and have pretty feets now. The vet was here last week and gave some vaccinations, inspected everyone, and gave her seal of approval. Now if it would dry out enough so the mosquitoes will shrivel up...

Comments

[silver-kiden.livejournal.com]

umm....165 - 1 =/= 155 >..> and you call yourself a librarian :p but really, hope the prices stay down for you! and that wet hay thing sounds like an interesting experiment >..>

[schnee.livejournal.com]

When you stack wet hay tightly, it builds up internal heat that can get high enough to produce spontaneous combustion.

Weird. o.O If it wasn't you saying that, I would likely have discounted it as an urban legend...

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Read it again. I said "take SOME down..." not just one. ;D

Wet hay is an experiment anyone can try, even if they live in the city. Cut the lawn. Put the grass clippings in a pile. Sprinkle lightly with water, and press them together under a weight. Come back in a day or two and see how hot they get. Believe it or not, this natural process has actually been used for slow cooking...

[altivo.livejournal.com]

No, it isn't a legend. I'm not sure what the process is, perhaps something to do with fermentation, but it can get really hot. We pulled six bales out of that load and set them aside because they were getting hot. All have been cut open and spread out so the air can get at them. Otherwise it becomes a critical mass thing. Several of these packed together will actually produce steam. I've seen it happen.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

*noddles* Interesting... you never stop learning new things. :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hay#Safety_issues

I just read an interesting (and amusing) article yesterday in a horse magazine. It was about nutrition and hay. After a scientific study was done to find the amino acid makeup of horse muscle tissue, the researchers discovered that it was exactly the same as that found in the protein in... ta-da! Hay!

Duh. Just common sense. The horse's natural food is grass, almost entirely. He is totally adapted to that diet. Hay is grass with the water removed.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link. :) *looks*

Mmm, and yeah, that's not really surprising, I'd say...

[soanos.livejournal.com]

Sounds nice. But if the pressure is not high enough, there will be mold all over the place. :\

[soanos.livejournal.com]

I wonder if they have found the human muscle tissue amino acid makeup. I would like to know how to get back some muscle I never had. :P

But yay for hay and healthy horsies! :)

*nibbles one bale carefully* Mm. This is some yummy hay :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

At those temperatures, the mold doesn't grow well. It's happy only below 50C or so. ;p

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I'm sure they have done that research. Presumably one way to get a nutritional match would be to eat humans... or parts of them... *gallops off immediately*

Building muscle mass is complicated. I never figured out how to do it either.

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

When you stack wet hay tightly, it builds up internal heat that can get high enough to produce spontaneous combustion.

*blinks* Seriously?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yes, very seriously. I've seen it produce steam. It can get hot enough to burn.

There's a Wikipedia reference cited above.

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

*chuckles* I know our human bodies are adapted to get more essentials out of "whole food animal sources" (I.E.)- what's grown by nature, versus what's compiled in a laboratory.

Building mass basically means lifting heavy stuff using the right muscles you want to grow big, then giving them time to recover and the nutrients needed. Everybody tries to complicate it a good deal so you buy more crap to help you "make sense of it".

In short, if you want to do something unnatural- like stay up 24 hours straight- you can guzzle an energy drink, coffee or smoke cigarettes, all loaded with stimulants- but if you want to get stronger, you have to work at it... a lot.

[soanos.livejournal.com]

You are a horse, my friend, you are safe. :)

On the other hand, there are plenty of lesser beings being noisy just under my window. I am sure no-one would miss them if I sliced one up and put it on a pan. >;)

[saythename.livejournal.com]

Just out of curiosity, whats your normal quota this time of year?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Quota? You mean, how much hay should we have on hand? Usually 280-300 bales by July 1. Yes, we're behind. We normally figure we need 700 a year, but this year that got us right down to the wire. There were only three bales of hay less than a year old when this load arrived. There were still 30 or 40 that were two years old or older, but I can't give those to horses. The sheep will eat them, but they complain about it and I can't blame them.

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

Wow. :) I learned sumthin' today :P

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Good. When you aren't learning anything new any more, you might as well be dead, I say. XD

[saythename.livejournal.com]

Farm stuff is hard!

^_^

I once had a fantasy of getting a small farm and
working it, but I found out that its not a pastoral
fantasy, its really a small business.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, if you're trying to actually make money off it, yeah, farming is hard work. Making money, let alone an income, off just five acres is all but impossible these days. We thought for a while that we might at least help to cancel out some costs, but the truth is that regulations restrict what you can do so severely that it just isn't worth it.

Still, we get to have as much garden as we can handle (if I wade my way out there through the mosquitos and plant it) and no one can say we can't have our pets here.

[aureth.livejournal.com]

Curious as to what you're paying for hay...I've heard some serious hay operators out here talking about $5.00 for a small square bale this year.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

That was what I was afraid of, and still wouldn't be surprised if it went that high before the summer's over, but we paid $3 for this first load.

There are definitely fewer acres in hay around here this year than last. Fuel to run tractors and haul hay racks around is up more than 50% from what it was this time last year. Those of us who have to buy hay are a captive market. All of this seems to add up to rising prices.

Hay acreage is being converted to corn (because of the ethanol bubble, which I don't think is legit, but just speculation and stupidity induced) and to wheat. Wheat I approve of, but there never was much of it grown around here in the past, so where they are getting up the cooperatives to harvest, store, and market it I'm not sure. Still, if it saves farmland from subdivision developers, I'm all for it.