A Dying Breed: The Small Square Hay Bale ~ Horse Hay

It is pretty amazing when you think about it. Take two people, a hundred tons of horse hay in small squares and pull it off hay wagons and stack it ready for winter. That's what we do at Willowview Hill Farm. Two people, pushing 60 - well O.K. now one is 60 and the other 57 - but still. Kids are grown and flown the coop eons ago. Spread across the Northeast USA with an occasional weekend day to come home and empty a couple of wagon loads, the hay season requires some guts for very little glory.

A conversation with a local farm mechanic who services many many farmers in the Catskill region was revealing. He knew almost no-one that still does small squares.

"Sure, I know cows not horses. I know the big bales are bad for horses. But cheap horse people buy them," he says, the early morning sun beats down on his dark locks and his accent is foreign.

No-one wants to handle the small bales anymore. Sure, the baler is approximately S35,000 instead of $90,000 to get a farmer started. Yet still, the small square farmer is a dying breed. And let's face it, the workload is humongous. The capital for the equipment needed even without insurance is over $100,000. for a reasonable size baler/cutter and turner plus wagons.

So the round hay baled for cows, with high moisture ( equals dust), a higher level of dead critters ( = botulism), is becoming more and more common around horse farms.

Horses become trapped in the huge metal hay racks, designed for low energy short legged cows not horses. Foals in particular are susceptible to damage this way. The hay is mostly wasted, because the horse is a picky eater. For good reason. Pay the vet or pay for hay we used to say.

In today's market the small square bale may fetch $4.50-$5.50 in the Catskill region. Take off the diesel cost, the machine wear and tear, the man hours operating and servicing equipment, the small windows of great weather for horse hay curing ( without the 20 chemical/preservatives that can affect horses and are completely untested on horses), the labor to stack, the building to stack the hay up properly and then the time to re-load the tractor trailer or end user with a horse trailer, and you have yourself a very expensive and labor intensive program.

If you are buying hay or making hay please do yourself a favor and read the 7 Deadly Sins of Haymaking. If you don't have this information you may be the first on the call line for the Fire Department.

The farm equipment mechanic told us that we are one of the last farmers he knows of in the area that puts up small squares.  And farm work as we know is very dangerous.  Last September when my husband was servicing the baler, the chain caught the oil rag he was holding and sucked his hand into the multi-chain mechanism resulting in a severed thumb. We have had many close calls over the years. One time another mechanic had switched up the parking brake to make a repair and had not properly reset it. When my husband hopped out the tractor with the brake on, to remove a bale that had escaped the wagon, the whole rig proceeded to move slowly forward. It inched and gained speed. He was between the baler and the wagon. Thankfully some guardian angel must have been present because I saw it start to go and shouted to him. He ran after it and managed to scale the steps and stop it. Not something I'd recommend as that in itself is dangerous. But these things or versions thereof happen every year. You must always be diligent. When you think everything is OK then you are headed for trouble. 'Familiarity breeds contempt,' as the saying goes. Even though we are avid horse breeders/horse people and know the benefit of the small squares, even we have looked at round baling our crop.

So when you head out in search of some high quality hay for your horses this season please take time to think about what effort for very little financial return has gone into the production. Small squares will not be around for ever. The workload is just too hard and the costs too high.