Haylage

[fimacg]

with demise of my hay crop my local friendly farmer is selling me big bales of haylage for £25.

very nice stuff too, but as my lot are permanently on diets I am wondering how long it will last I opened the first bale (a smaller sized one that he had made with the end of the field) last weekend and so far used a bit less than half.

I still smells nice and there is no heat in the bale or mould that I can see, but as I am more used to hay than are there other signs that I should watch out for in terms of it going off.

The farmer was aiming for hay with this crop but baled it a day early and wrapped it because of the weather so is pretty dry.

[brigadier]

Thats a good price Fi and you can afford to throw some away if it doesnt keep. Normally it will last about ten days but it needs to be cold weather, any sunshine and you can smell and feel it going funny, it tends to get a white bloom, a little bit doesnt matter as the horses will pick it but a lot isnt good or a tendency to it being too wet in patches, dont feed that. I found it went offquicker if I tried to keep it wrapped so now I completely unwrap it and shake out the hay for the day. I dont mind if there is a bit of heat in the roll but a lot tells you its going off quickly. Also keep it on its side rather than on its end, and roll it to and fro to get your new stuff off, that way you keep the bale moving and using all of the bits that come into contact with the ground, if its on its end the bit stood on the floor starts to go off and towards the end of the bale you are constantly sorting the claggy botttom bits out which takes time when filling nets! Hope that helps.

[haffyfan]

Pretty much what brig said, last year was my first time using it. I've also found unwrapping the bales fully helps enormously and i tend to individually bag enough to last me all week (for ease purposes mainly but i found it keeps better this way as the bale gets dissected as such so not so hot and 'dries' out a bit too), i then try to pull the centre core out and cover this and the remaining bottom of bale separately as I've found it doesn't heat up as much once this core is removed. I tend to use this centre bit first. My first bale this year lasted almost 3 weeks this way and it works much better when cold for reasons already stated.