Warm and dry conditions have managed to prevail for the last few days of July and some farmers are taking advantage of the current spell of weather by aiming to secure a crop of hay.
As farmers will know all too well, securing a crop of hay can be challenging in Irish weather conditions and getting to crop to the required dry matter can be difficult – in particular where heavy grass covers are being cut.
Despite this, many farmers like to secure some hay when the opportunity arises, and as the old saying goes: ‘Good hay saved and in the shed is as good as money in the bank.’
Lighter, stemmy grass swards are generally easier to rear as hay, but will still require tedding and a few days of hot, dry weather to avoid the risk of fusty bales.
Good quality hay is a useful feed resource to have on all types of livestock farms and can be added to diets as a fibre source and is often offered to sick animals that have to be isolated.
While good quality feeding straw is often the preferred roughage feed for calves, where straw supplies are scarce, hay can also be fed to young calves to help with rumen development.
Met Éireann has forecast weather conditions to become damper in some areas countrywide in the second half of this week and where hay is not dry enough when baled, it can always be wrapped and used as haylage feed.
Hay bales generally have a dry matter of 85-90% and haylege is made when the dry matter is lower than this.
Where round bales of hay have been made, it is often advisable to store these loose on their round ends in the field or in a covered passage of a shed to avoid the risk of bales that are not fully dried heating and going on fire.
Small square bales are often gathered into stacks, covered over the top with a plastic sheet and left to dry further or where farmers are confident the hay will not heat, are stacked into the shed.
Where heavy ran soaks into square bales, it can have a negative impact on quality where as round bales left on their side in the field tend not to be impacted by a fall of rain.