Producers who had to leave their round hay bales laying out in the fields all winter long probably don’t need to be concerned about the quality of the bales – as long as certain conditions were met at the time of cutting and baling.
In many areas of the Northern Plains, there was a lot of round hay bales that did not make it to the barnyard for winter stacking due to the heavy snow in fall 2022.
“Once the ground gets frozen, the bales left out in the field should just sit there through the winter and be okay,” said James Rogers, NDSU Extension forage crops production specialist at NDSU’s North Central Research Extension Center.
The quality of the hay is mostly due to timing, and how and when it was baled.
“A lot of whether hay bales are preserved or not has to do with the conditions that occurred when they were initially baled. If producers cut hay at the right time, and they got it baled without too much moisture so the bale didn’t go through an excessive heating process and they made a good, well-shaped bale, the quality should still be there,” he said.
Rogers explained all hay bales when they are baled go through a process because there is still moisture trapped in that bale. If hay is not allowed to dry in windrows before baling and is baled when it has too much moisture, it will go through an excessive heating process resulting in lower quality, deteriorating hay.
Even if the bale was baled under the right conditions, Rogers still recommends forage testing ahead of feeding that hay to livestock.
“I would still recommend that they test prior to feeding, especially if they haven’t done that already. If the bales have been out in winter weather conditions, I would still suggest that they get a good forage test,” he said.
Additionally, in some areas this spring, the snow melted quickly with rising warm temperatures. If those bales were in a flood zone and absorbed too much water during flooding, the quality would deteriorate.
“In Minot and in Surrey (located seven miles east of Minot), we had a rapid snow melt this spring and then we’ve had a lot of rainfall the end of last week,” he said on May 19. “If you had bales stuck in a flood zone, that quality is questionable. Once the bale gets dried out and then for some reason it is placed in area that gets flooded, and it absorbs a lot of water, the quality will deteriorate.”
Producers who had to leave their round hay bales laying out in the fields all winter long probably don’t need to be concerned about the quality of the bales – as long as certain conditions were met at the time of cutting and baling.