Rained on hay

For those of you making dry hay in the mid-atlantic region- how long ?can? you leave hay on the ground before a oncoming rain event will ruin it? In other words, if you mowed your hay on a Tuesday morning, and on Wednesday afternoon you were hit by a thunderstorm, would the hay quality and color suffer? I personally have mowed in the afternoon and been rained on overnight with practically no effect at all. What if the hay has been down for 24 hours? 36 hours etc? I am asking the question because there have been times that rain was in the forecast, and due to off farm work obligations I was considering mowing, letting the hay get rained on, and then drying out and baling. We are talking hay for resale here. I know some people will say they have baled rained on hay that has sat out for a week or so and their cattle ate it. That?s fine, but I?m sure there was considerable color loss affecting sale price. What have your experiences been with rained on hay?

Cows eat it better than hay put up too green.

after years of doing that rained on hay is not worth much if selling period. very light rain you have chance anything more than that good luck. you need friend that can just roll it up into large round to get it off ground. sure glad i sold all baling equipment close 15 years ago now. it very tough dealing in hay and public.

(quoted from post at 13:29:35 07/24/17) after years of doing that rained on hay is not worth much if selling period.

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Quality of "rained on" depends on several factors. Was hay laying flat or in a windrow? How much rain on hay & how many days hay laid on ground before baling? I've baled grass hay laid flat that had 1'' of rain that I got dry & baled the next day that still had green color with no musty smell.

Boy...so many variables.

Myself, I will purposely go out and mow just before dark to maximize the sugars in they hay, even if there is rain forecast overnight. Hay rained on the first night after drying is practically the same as a heavy dew.

This is one of those fuzzy logic questions, though. There are a whole bunch of factors with scales of better and worse:

Rained on sooner after cutting is better than later.

Rained on in a windrow is better than being tedded or in a swath. (assuming that you'll get some dry weather to tedd the windrow back out to dry)

Rained on by a quick cloud burst followed by dry weather is better than getting rained on for days at a time.

I agree with the comment above about cows. With cows, it depends mostly on whether the hay was good (as in young and tender) when it was cut.

I had some very nice early june hay rained on last year when it was in the windrow ready to bale. I could have cried. Even worse, it rained for a few days. That windrow turned yellow and got super bleached. The next patch of dry weather, I tedded it out and let it re-dry. I baled it up and put it on the bedding side of the haybarn.

When I spread it out under the cows, they would turn around and eat their bedding.

In the end, I fed it to them and used some older, more "stemmy" hay for bedding.

These were dry cows too; so I wasn't worried about making milk. I'm sure that the nutrients weren't the greatest; even though it was very palatable.

It didn't have mold from storage, but the windrow had mold in it that dried out after tedding; so I would NEVER have fed that hay to a horse, even if it didn't smell like mold.

I'm sure that it wouldn't have been very good for selling either.

Depends on the hay itself to start with. Over mature hay can't handle rain as well as younger stuff. But it's all a crap shoot. In the most basic terms, I'd say the more it gets rained on and the longer it sits wet, the more it degrades. As far as color loss, the sun does as much of that as rain does.

I will try to specifically answer your question. I am in the northeast but I don't think the conditions that you specify will be significantly different. You asked a very specific question. The answer that I will give you is simply that the closer to dry that it gets before getting rained on the more feed value and color will be lost. You don't mention the biggest factor in this picture: Your credibility with the customer. You say the hay is for resale; I think that you mean for sale. The only way that you can pull off what you want to do is if you have a long term relationship with the customer. I had some hay rained on a month ago. It had dried for two days. It still looked good after redrying and baling. My customers took it at a 20% discount. One has been buying from me for fifteen years, the other for twenty-five. I don't believe that you will get a customer to go along with it unless you have a very good relationship with them.

I've never baled anything that my cows wouldn't eat eventually,but if you're selling to horse people,you won't be selling it to horse people.

I agree with parisspringstom. But I will add that rained on hay looks a lot better coming out of the barn in February than going in in June.

Also agree with rrlund.

I view hay like tea leafs. When green and rinsed, no tea. Dry and rinsed, you got tea and the leafs are worthless. I feel you can mow and take a rain and be OK, after a few days depending on the volume of rain, you might have a problem or maybe not.

You can't paint all hay as one size fits all. Rained on hay might bring the protein and nutrients down for an easy keeper or IR horse and you've got something to sell.

Bale your hay, have it tested and sell it accordingly.

Good luck,
Bill

What you are contemplating is not something I would recommend for your intended purpose...... it's a crap shoot at best. However, I seldom leave rained on hay in the field. If it's a day or less since cut that it got rained on the difference is pretty small. If it's just about dry when it gets wet... it's going to be pretty bleached out. But if you get some sun it will eventually dry out and you bale what you got left. I put that stuff aside in a corner, or I round bale it for cow hay. It always goes somewhere. I'm lucky to have a decent market for construction hay so I can dispose of the crap like that. Other stuff that isn't so bad.... sells pretty good by about march on a year where hay is scarce. It always feeds better than snow balls and 2x4's. Nobody likes it. I sell it on the take it or leave it principle..... this is what it is... and you can take it or leave it.

Rod

As a general rule the longer the hay has been cut the more damage rain does to it and if it dries out and gets a 2nd rain its straw as far as I'm concerned.Especially true if you're cutting the hay with something that breaks the stems open.

My horses will eat rained on hay better than mature stemy never rained on hay. I could go out now and take a picture of hay baled the third day after mowing that the alfalfa had been in bloom two weeks or longer that did not even have as much as heavy dew that the horses have pick thru and pushed up in a bunch. The sun and heat this last week has made it look like straw. It was bright green in the bale. I'll have to let them tromp it down and load it in a spreader. 44 acres of it so the horses will have to learn to eat some stems later on. Grandson's cattle clean it up though. He just knocked down my 44 acres of alfalfa today and it looks like third cutting rather than second cutting.

I sell to horse people too. I cut in evening and generally don't mind rain the firstight. I have actually cut in the rain knowing a front is moving thru. The worst rain is on dry hay. It is usually a total loss and we feed it to our stock.

For a lot of folks , Price is what sells hay , and in March cheaper rained on hay will feed the cows one or two days a week to make a short supply of good hay last till spring . All hay will sell at some price , this is my point . Bale it when it is dry , and don't worry about it .

In the mid Atlantic area, when hay gets rained on, it will usually be very humid unless a Tony blowshru. Wet hay under humid conditions will mold fast. Especially alfalfa. No good for horses. Even dry, it will have a mold smell.