# Salting stacked hay



## majacoby2003

How many of you salt your stacked hay?

From the little research I've done, if you don't have a preserver applicator on your baler, salting hay by hand when stacking is the way to go if you have bales that are a little damp, say around 20 to 25%.

If you have salted, how do you salt and stack?
Some say salt and stack as normal and other say to leave a gap between the bales.

Horse owners that have been salting say that there are no adverse effects on the horses or any other live stock.

Any comments welcome.
Thanks, Mark


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## 4020man

I tried salting hay once. Never cared for it and the bales were too far gone to save anyway. Also tried salting large rounds once it didn't work out very well.


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## OhioHay

We have salted hay for along time. We stack normally(with accumulator grab) and salt each layer. I think if you leave gaps, that is where the moisture will concetrate and then dust or mold that spot. I think salting helps if you are a little tough, say 20 or 21%, but definately not any higher in the summer. The fall is a little different, might get away with higher moisture. I don't think it will replace preservative for higher moisture baling as a whole, but can be better than nothing. As for the animals, mainly horses that we sell to, it doesn't affect them at all.


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## slfactivitybarn

We began salting the square bales at the second cutting. This was after we saw that all the first cutting was molding. My wife has several horses and our farm sells to other horse owners. The salt is basic table salt that we use.  The minerals in the salt is actually good for the horses.


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## kfarm_EC_IL

We have salted when hay has had to put up in less than ideal conditions. Found that it worked well and was well pleased the barn didn't burn down!


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## Rodney R

We used to salt a lot of hay. I never saw any real benefit to it. I'm of the opinion that if hay is going to spoil, it'll spoil wether I put salt on it or not. The salt really just makes bad hay test good to the animals - they like the salt, and the taste of the salt, and the heat generated by the spoiling hay has melted the salt into the hay, and they'll eat it all.

I know that proprionic acid works. I'm pretty sure that salt doesn't. I do know that hay that has heated up to any extent has lost most of the nutrients that it used to have...... The ultimate solution is to bale hay when it's dry, but we all know that's not entirely possible.....

I think that salt we used was a top flow evaporated....... Came in like a 50lb bag, was fine, but not as fine as table salt......

Rodney


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## Production Acres

Salt is the oldest preservative known to man. We salt fish, we cure hams in salt, beef jerky is generally dried and salted. From what I remember from chemistry, you can inhibit mold with either a acid or a base. Proponic acid is an acid and salt is NaCl+ and is a base. Additionally, salt draws water to it. So when you salt hay, you not only(agree with rodney very much that animals eat salted hay better for the salt) change the taste of the hay, you also change teh pH of the hay, thus somewhat inhibiting the growth of mold. Now unless someone has an application chart for salting hay that I don't know about put out by some wonderful university in the '40's, the main reason it works for one person and not the other is moisture content and application rate. One person puts 50# salt to 1 ton hay, another puts 50# salt to 10 tons hay.
We used to use a lot of salt, but proponic acid is a lot easier to apply, application rates are known, it is probably much cheaper.
If you bale 1000 bales of hay for your own use every year, buy a couple hundred pounds of salt, but baling a couple hundred or more acres, call Harvesttech.


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## ISF

You can use SiloGuard to stop mold and yeast between the bales just like you would use salt. It's more effective.


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