# Hay quality troubles



## westwindfarm1 (Aug 5, 2008)

I've been baling hay for a while now and for some reason every once in a while I'll get hay that looks great, but the cows here on the farm won't even look twice at it. It just doesn't smell fresh like it should.

Any ideas what might be causing this? Am I just baling it a little to wet and then when it cooks out in the barn it loses it freshness? We don't use a moisture meter, just bale by how it feels. We salt the hay sometimes but we are not running any preservative on the baler.

The reason for not running preservative is that we are organic and as far as I know there are no preservatives out there that pass NOP organic standards. If thats not the case who is the company the produces a certified organic hay preservative?

Any ideas to fix this problem would be great.

Thanks


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## Hayboy1 (Jul 19, 2008)

Do you spread cow manure on the fields? We bought some beautiful hay out in NYS a year and a half ago, and we had the same problem, it was beautiful to look at, but nothing would eat it.


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## ISF (Jun 4, 2008)

westwindfarm1 said:


> I've been baling hay for a while now and for some reason every once in a while I'll get hay that looks great, but the cows here on the farm won't even look twice at it. It just doesn't smell fresh like it should.
> 
> Any ideas what might be causing this? Am I just baling it a little to wet and then when it cooks out in the barn it loses it freshness? We don't use a moisture meter, just bale by how it feels. We salt the hay sometimes but we are not running any preservative on the baler.
> 
> ...


There is an organic hay preservative that is approved by OMRI called Eureka. For more information email me at [email protected]


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## hayfarmer (Nov 9, 2008)

I am sure that you organic intentions are good, but the reason your cows don't like the hay is because it is not palletable, in other words "it don't taste good". Commerical fertilizer is blended to meet the specific plant needs based on soil samples (assuming that you soil sample). N, P, & K provide important nutrients required by the plant. The healther the plant, the better it taste to the aminal. Nitrogen promotes plant growth and is also major contributor to the palletability of the hay. Take a bale of hay produced from an non-fertilized field and a bale from a properly fertilized field and the animal will go for the fertilized bale every time. Commerical fertilizer is not bad, improper fertilzer management and poor land management is bad. In order for the organic program to work, it must contain all the necessary nutrients that the plant needs or the plant will mine the nutrients from the soil it needs until there are no more nutrients in the soil.

If you are baling the hay too green and it is moldy, then it could be part of the problem. However it has got to be really bad (visible black mold on bale) for a cow not to eat it.


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## haybaler101 (Nov 30, 2008)

Agri-King has an organic version of Silo-King which is approved for organic use. Call 800-435-9560 or reply to me for more information.


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## Production Acres (Jul 29, 2008)

we use a lot of chicken litter on our hay ground and used to have similar problems - we also use "regular" fertilizer to supplement the litter. We discovered that the wheel rakes we were using were obvisouly touching the ground and were flipping dust from the manure debris onto the hay as we raked it into the windrow. thus our hay tasted like manure. We switched to rollbar v-rakes and the problem went away as we got our rake off the ground. A good rotary would also work!


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## swmnhay (Jun 13, 2008)

I heard of some hay were a guy spread liquid hog manure between cuttings and the cattle wouldn't eat it.


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## 4020man (Jun 21, 2008)

There is an organic version of Pro-Serve III(the preservative we use) also. Send me a pm if you are interested


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