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I grew up making hay, literally. Sitting on my dads lap on a 4000 Ford pulling a #5 JD sickle mower (picture of me there in 1969). To touch test for an outside stored round bale, I can get close enough. I do like a moisture meter to check myself since 'dry enough' for me is a moving target (we wrap wet hay for round bale silage, use propinic acid on slightly damp hay to reduce mold and spoilage, and then dry hay). The meters are way more important on the acid treated hay than anything else, at $20 a ton for the acid and rate varying depending on moisture content, I sure dont want to waste any money there. For the ferminted hay, as the moisture content changes, so does the quality of fermintation and intake. Now 'horse hay'. When I had them, like yours, they ate with the cows. Outside stored round bales and if they died they died (never did). Also never had a farrier or a dentist see to them either. They did just fine. When I board horses, they get inside stored rolled hay. Not worth the risk of making one sick, and it will happen. I lost two in 2001 with botulism (lab report, Uni of KY Diag Lab). Thankfully I had told the owner to move them, but he didnt, left them a week and they got into some molded wheat hay. Most of the horses I board are saddlebreds in the 10K to 50K insured range. But more than that, there are two things I never ever want to do, and I have customers in both catagories. I dont ever want to face some 7 year old kid at church who was feeding my hay to her pony, it dies, and the necropsy says it was anything to do with the feed and me not be able to KNOW I did everything I could to make a good product. The other is I dont ever want to explain to my insurance agent why he has a bill for a $1-2M thoroughbred yearling that the necropsy shows was my hay. The hay hasnt changed, but the business sure has.
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