With the price of hay up this year and the wet season last year I am looking for a way to reduce hay spoilage for this coming winter in WI. The flooding late last August meant that about every bale sitting outside in W WI may have had 20" of rain on it between baling and usage. Maybe more. I found that by late winter I was having to discard much of the outside foot or so of 6 ft diameter round bales due to mold. The outside foot on a 6 ft diameter bale has about 44% of the hay in a bale! I don't have a hay shed so I thought I'd try these bale sleeves that are about $3.80 per bale. Problem I ran into the other day is that the fellow I buy hay from makes very nice big high density bales but they evidently are a bit bigger than 6 ft in diameter. I ended up slitting the sleeves and duct taping the bottom. I have a bunch of scrap pallets and thought I'd set the early bales on them until I run out. It took about 10 minutes per bale to get them on and set on the pallet. Question is - is it worth the effort? Is the hay going to be noticeably better come late winter with these covers on compared to the regular net wrap on them already? These are 5 x 6 ft bales. Anyone with experience with these in a wet, cold climate? Here's a picture of my first attempt at using bale sleeves. Jim at Dawn
Edited by Jim 7/21/2008 20:13
(Bale Sleeve IMG_0968_1.JPG)
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Bale Sleeve IMG_0968_1.JPG (69KB - 597 downloads)
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