A Primer about Hay

     This is not intended to be an exhaustive white paper on how to make hay, actually I will talk very little about making hay what I really want to answer some basic questions that came up as I was discussing some of the difficulties we had getting our hay in the barn.  Some of the types of hay I mentioned folks were not aware of so I wanted to discuss them.     

    Hay is a very important commodity on a pastured based grass fed farm.  In conventional farming where beef and lamb are fed grains the quality and quantity of the hay is less important than it is on our farm.  With grass being the sole source of nutrition the beef and lamb get, it is not only important for the hay to be high quality but to be sufficient to provide all their needs.  We typically make half to 2/3rds of the hay we will need, the rest is purchased. 

    Before  I get too far in types of hay I guess I should describe what I mean by hay.  Hay is typically a stored forage.  So it will be a grass or legume that is harvested and stored for later use.  So grasses are things you are familiar with but when we say legume we are typically, in this part of the country, talking about either clover or alfalfa.  There are many other types of legumes but we will discuss that in another post if necessary. We pick grasses and legumes based on their growth profile and nutrition profile.  Legumes are typically more palatable (flavorful) than grasses and provide more calories and protein.  We usually grow and buy hay that are a mix of both grasses and legumes but some farmers will grow either straight grass or alfalfa hays for a myriad of reasons.  Hays will not include grains.  So even though corn and wheat are strictly speaking varietals of grasses they are not included in the broad term hay.

   To start you will hear the terms 1st cut, second cut and so on.  What are we talking about and what are the attributes of each cut of hay.  The term 1st cut hay means the the first harvest of hay during the current growing season.  Then second cut would be the second harvest and so on through as many cuts as you can get in any one season.  Depending on the type of hay (grass or legume) you need 4-8 weeks between cuts.  So for a grass hay or grass/legume mix you can harvest hay in May (1st cut), July (2nd cut) and early September (3rd cut).  You could get another cut in late October or Early November if the weather is right but you risk hurting the subsequent seasons harvest and not leaving your grass with enough time to develop the reserves of fuel to make it through winter strong enough to start spring.

    So what are the differences of the different cuts.  Typically 1st cut is the least nutritious and the least palatable for a couple reasons.  1st the grass tries to go though a reproductive cycle (set those seed heads that you see in tall grass)  When grass goes through a reproductive cycle it puts energy into producing seed heads and not putting sugar into the leave.  So it doesn't taste as good and isn't as nutritions.  Secondly it has those seed heads and stalks.  When dried, those stalks will "stab" the mouth of the livestock and make it a little uncomfortable to eat. This is one of the many reasons it is important to get 1st cut hay off earlier.  More leaves than stocks, More sugar than seeds.  So this year when it was too wet to make hay early in May the grass set seed heads and the 1st cut hay is a little less nutritious.  2nd and subsequent cuts of hay have another advantage.  In the early spring when it is still cool the legumes aren't growing.  Actually clovers don't really start to come on until later in June early July.  So with 2nd cut hay, the grass has already gone through its reproductive cycle so no stalky seed heads and the legumes are coming on.  So 2nd cut is soft on the mouth, has more sugar in the leaf and more protein in the legume.  So if you are a casual hay buyer this is why second cut hay is more expensive.

    I have also discussed about wet hay and dry hay.  Dry hay is the hay we are all used to seeing.  After cutting it, is dried down to a level of 20% moisture or less, then baled.  It can be small squares, large rounds or large squares but it will be all the same.  You really don't want it drier than about 16% because then leaves break down and turn to dust.  So you are really trying to hit a small window of 16-20% moisture at baling time. 

    Wet hay is decedent of silage.  The old farm silo is where green chop (Corn that was harvested still green and chopped up was put into the top of the silo and then sealed so it would ferment, yes ferment.  So just like Betsy's Fermented pickles from the Happy Pickler and real fermented sauerkraut can make more palatable food for us fermenting crops can do the same.  They not only make a bester tasting product but feed the microbes in the cattle rumen to aid in the bolstering of their immune system.  Instead of building big silos and putting grass in them to ferment.  We dry our hay down to between 40-60% then bale it "wet" and wrap in in the while plastic you see above.  In this anaerobic (without oxygen) environment the water and the sugars in the grass ferment and make a high palatable and soft forage that the cattle love.

     The real reason we want a more palatable food for cattle is the better it tastes, the more comforting on its mouth the more they eat.  The more they eat the better they gain.  In the livestock business you don't make any money on skinny animals.  So you might ask why don't we make all of our hay wet.  It's more expensive to make.  Each big round bale costs about $12/bale more to make.  The labor to wrap and the plastic costs are pretty high plus there is the fact that you are storing water.  The bales have to be about 1/3 smaller because the equipment can't lift them if they are too big.  So you are handling and storing a lot more bales plus you are storing water.  So we typically only do part of our harvest in wet hay.  Trying to get first cut done in balage (wrapped wet hay) makes the most sense but 1st cut is always the cut you are in the most of a hurry so you sometimes don't want to slow down to wrap it. 

    I think this is enough for now.  I hope you can see making hay can be as much art as science and we really didn't get into the making of quality hay.  Plus if you do it wrong you live with it until next year.  If you have more questions about hay please leave them in the comments and I will get to them.