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Is there a citation for haylage being more common in Europe than the US? At least anecdotally here in northern New England haylage is very common, though difficult to compare to traditional baling since the wrapped bales get left stacked visibly outside while other hay gets stored out of sight. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vttale (talk • contribs) 15:17, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
I think that this section should probably be properly wikified (instead of consisting out of block quotes). The reference from which was cited could then be listed in references as "Some of this article comes from the public domain resource [...]". —Michiel Sikma (Kijken maar niet aanraken) 09:30, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
As far as I know hay was not known to the Romans. Who invented/discovered it? How did its use spread around the world. It must have made a tremendous difference to farming systems. Does anyone know anything about this.Frank.corr 07:40, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
I am going to move the information on hay making out of Uses and in to Hay Making. Makes it easier for the reader to keep 'uses' seperate from the 'how to' part. wagors 16:38, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
I added a piquant fact or two known only to Ghengis Khan. You all can thank me later. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cold' the clammy cement (talk • contribs) 20:08, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
Past tense used in this section makes it sound like no one makes hay anymore. Also very industrial country centric as hay is still gathered by hand in some parts of the world. Will come back later and see if there is something I can do. wagors 16:52, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
Please remove all the images from the article that show Straw (dry stalk of cereal plants), and no hay (dry grass). This should be featured? You geeks. --Tom 17:28, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
The picture showing 'hay left out until Autumn' looks like straw baled from a cereal crop the year before to me. The area looks to have a full years weed growth (set aside maybe?) I'm 90% certain not hay anyway.4wd (talk) 21:57, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
It's round bales laying in grass, not in a fallow field, and one sees a lot of this grungy-looking stuff that's well over a year old. I think it's hay, (the photo uploader identiied it as hay, not that this is any guaratee) but the real point is that it's what it looks like when it's rotten. I'll tweak the caption some to indicate age, but yes, I have seen hay that looks like this ;-P. Montanabw(talk) 01:43, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
Up to the end of the 19th century, grass and clover were not often grown together because crops were rotated.
Mdwyer, you are correct, that change was deliberate vandalism. The current revert is correct to the best of my knowledge (or at least was what was there before I made the change). I've removed the citation needed tag, since it wasn't there before I untruthed the article, and I assume it doesn't need to be there now that it's been reverted. 40.0.40.10 05:01, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
A few observations on crop rotation regarding hay: These are typically perennial crops which grow from early spring until autumn without annual planting, thus crop rotation is not typical. The line between hay and straw can sometimes be defined by the maturity of the plants. Annual grasses that are harvested as hay may, but do not always include seed heads. Many plants are more nutritious when 'greener,' that is, wetter and earlier in the growing season. Harvesting later will include more seed heads, which may be the goal of selecting such a harvest time. For a variety of reasons, grain crops such as wheat, barley, rye, and oats are often harvested as hay well before seed maturity. When the seed heads are mature, the stem and leaves are dried and are called straw--and have much reduced nutritional value. Also, as some grain plants mature, the sexual structures, particularly the 'beards' are very stiff and pointed or prickly and can be damaging to the eyes of livestock.Homebuilding (talk) 18:36, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
I've just expanded the article a little, covering spontaneous combustion and the move from small bales to large bales.
Here's a photo I took a few hours ago, which shows the dense hay in the middle of a large round bale. Is it worth adding this photo to the article? Cheers, CWC(talk) 14:50, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
I've finally got around to uploading a better photo and adding to the article. CWC(talk) 15:55, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
My recent edit was just an experiment, but seems to have set of a flurry of changes. Thanks, Montanabw, for greatly improving on what I did. Thanks too to user:Sirex98 for adding that great photo.
As user:Montanabw pointed out in an edit summary, it's quite OK to alternate images to the left and right. Does anyone want to try it?
One side comment: Montanabw captioned the photo I took as "Poor quality hay, bleached from weather or harvested late, of low nutritive value, but adequate for some animals if fed free-choice, as it is dry and not spoiled". But around here, that counts as good quality hay! (Some locals grow lucerne hay under center pivots, but most hay comes from non-irrigated land. Except for superfine woolgrowers, Australian farmers rarely keep stock indoors, since they don't have to worry about snow. So hay is basically used only as supplemental feed.)
Which illustrates one reason Wikipedia is weak on agricultural topics: it's hard to write good articles when there's so much variation from place to place. Cheers, CWC 18:55, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
Thank you, Montanabw (talk · contribs), for your recent edits to this article. Great work! Cheers, CWC 14:42, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
User 142.161.225.123 (talk · contribs) recently added this to the article:
This seems like an interesting piece of historic lore, but we'd need a citation. Can anyone help? Thanks, CWC 10:41, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
If a useful formula can be found, and this is very possible, the most important factor is the type of hay that is the point of the discussion. For example, a yellow straw bale (made by the traditional square baler that was most common in the 1950s through the 1980s) might weigh between 50 and 60 pounds. The same sized alfalfa hay bale could weigh nearly twice as much. Of course, the preparation of the hay is extremely important as well. The composition of the haystack is extremely important as loose hay in a haystack can easily weigh only a fifth that of mechanically compressed bales, whether round or square.Homebuilding (talk) 18:54, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
I was bold today and tossed out the entire 1881 Cyclopaedia section. It is internally contradictory, either repeats what is in the history or else is just archaic and not of a lot of use here. If anyone is enamored of it however, or wants excerpts to put back into the article, here is what I cut in its entirety. Montanabw 04:15, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
From the 1881 Household Cyclopedia
In the second image down, barley has been recently substituted for alfalfa, but the caption still reads newly baled which would refer to a field scene, not the shed. The alfalfa before was a perfect example of rounded bales whereas the barley appears to be variously cured or mixed grasses. - Athrash | Talk 20:09, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Regarding this reversion - The source listed in reference 7 doesn't state *anything* anymore, as that linked page no longer exists. I was incorporating information found lower in the page (in the Section "Safety issues"), as I though a statement saying that drier hay has a lower risk of burning was counter intuitive and needed explaining. But on further review, it appears that the source given there (#12) doesn't exit anymore either. -- 128.104.112.114 (talk) 16:35, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
There seems to be a degree of confusion about wrapping bales with plastic film as in the silage bale picture and using netwrap instead of twine to hold the outer layers of a round bale in place.
The netwrap is increasingly popular as much as anything because it speeds the final stage of round bale making which with twine requires many revolutions of the bale. Net wrap only needs go around three or four turns.
There's very little evidence or claim made that netwrap 'repells moisture'.
It may keep the outer layer somewhat more compressed which might enhance the self thatching effect.
I changed the caption on the picture but haven't made changes to the main text.
A little caution may be needed in this due to different experiences dependant on climate variation - but the above is my experience in the UK.
we are in a dry area where hay is still quite widely made as well as silage (clamps and bales) - but annual rainfall is such that hay cannot be left outside without considreable spoilage of outer layers.
4wd (talk) 21:49, 3 July 2009 (UTC) 3rd July 2009
(Continued from Montanabw's talk page.)
Although it is not widely understood, grasses are flowering plants, and, as such, have flowers and fruits. The flowers are tiny, mostly hidden by bracts, and without petals. A grass grain is the fruit.
All this relates to hay because the same factors affect the nutritional value of grass hay that affect legume hay: the distribution of nutrients in different parts of the plant at different stages of growth. Early in the growing season, the leaves are nutrient-rich, because they are active sites of photosynthesis. As the season progresses, nutrients move to the developing flowers and then fruits, and in perennial plants to the roots to support the next year's crop of leaves.
Straw comes from the end-point of the process: all the nutrients have moved into the grain, which was harvested, and the remainder of the plant contains only those nutrients that couldn't be relocated, primarily the cellulose of the cell walls. Late-season hay harvests approach the point of being "straw + grain", with a very different proportion of nutrients, and with less nutrients overall (energy is expended by the plant in making the grain). I'm not familiar with the literature of hay nutrition, but I expect it could all be evaluated in this context.--Curtis Clark (talk) 15:11, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
I substituted fiber for empty calories in the section on the poor nutritional quality of straw, because it is the fiber that would give animals the sense of fullness. I thought in this context the empty calories link would likely be confusing because its article refers almost entirely to human nutrition, where the term refers to high energy content food with few other nutrients besides calories. Straw by contrast consists almost entirely of dietary fiber, and though not indigestible to ruminants, is so hard to digest that they get little benefit from it except a sense of fullness and, in cold weather, the heat of its fermentation in their stomachs.CharlesHBennett (talk) 20:43, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
What do they call hay that is stacked in a barn(small bails)Is it Hay Mound? or hay Mow? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.44.136.113 (talk) 09:01, 28 July 2010 (UTC)
Many farm operations involve only a single person and managing a single 50 to 90 pound hay bale is relatively safe for one person. However, large round bales weighing 800 to 900 pounds are now the dominant form of hay harvesting in mechanized parts of the world. Lifting the heavy cylindrical bales with a tractor front end loader has proven to be unsafe as bales rolling from the loader is not infrequent. Farm tractors are also slower than road traffic and are generally less safe for longer distance hay moving. Small farm pickup trucks are commonly modified to convey a single bale by means of penetrating the center of a bale with a four foot spike. The spike hydraulically tilts the bale forward and up to a safe attitude that allows secure public road transport above 40 miles per hour.
Photo of pickup truck bale lifting mechanism needed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Homebuilding (talk • contribs) 19:23, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
How frequent are fatal accidents with hay bales? Does their (apparent) relative scarcity make any individual case any more or less "trivial". I would guess that victims' families would not regard these events as trivial. Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 19:14, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
This content on "Poling" was added, but then deleted because it is unsourced and regionally limited. However, to give the material a chance to find a source, I have relocated the "poling" paragraphs here, in the hopes that someone can find a reliable reference:
Before balers and into the 1960's, some farmers in Manitoba "stacked" the hay in the same field it was grown, and built these stacks by "poling" The hay was cut with a horse drawn mower, sun dried, then first raked into "windrows" or winrows, and then cross raked into "coils". These coils would then be "dragged" together to form a stack by "poling". The "POLE" is a 16 foot 8x8 timber with a 20 foot chain attached at both ends of the timber each running to a team of horses controlled by very long leather lines held by two men --one at each end of the pole.
The coils of hay would be collected by dragging this pole from coil to coil accumulating sufficient hay to form the bottom layer of the haystack. A second layer would be accumulated in the same fashion but with planks forming a ramp, this second layer would be slid on top of the first forming this mound of about 10 feet deep, maybe 15 feet long by about 12 feet wide. This stack would be lengthened by subsequent collection of coils in the same manner. the Stack would be "topped" by hand/hayfork to a mound form to help shed rain.
Good info on the sizes and weights of different types of hay bales and other ways hay can be stored. http://www.thehorse.com/articles/32068/digesting-different-hay-forms
Montanabw thinks I reverted twice, but I didn't.see this edit summary I added content, which I partially reverted (once) to correct the "bad form" that you pointed out. Also I didn't remove a footnote: I merely moved the whole text, footnote included, from Composition to Safety issues, where it turns out the fescue endophyte mentioned by 24.220.222.246 was already discussed, though not clearly.
I don't think we should have information repeated in Composition and Safety issues.
What to do next?
--Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 20:34, 16 January 2014 (UTC)
If we want to link to conditions related to eating fresh grass, I think that it is WP:UNDUE weight to list them in the main article body text, and not helpful to list only a single example. A better approach would to be to create an efn with the major conditions listed that way. Montanabw(talk) 22:34, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
Why was Haystack deleted and redirected to Hay? It looks like a decent article, with useful information (which was not included into Hay). Don't you think it should be restored? Thanks. Zgaba (talk) 05:46, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
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