Okie knows farming

guy down the road a piece just built a beautiful huge lofted barn.

looks just like the one fell in on itself on my grandad's old farm.

except it is made of bright red aluminum...

he has fancy horses and fancier daughters.

How's the cattle business dys?

I'm retired, live in the city.

I promise I won't tell okie.

What difference does it make, parados?

Heres a picture of what a BAnk BArn looks like. Its a very common sight in the NE, because its an economical use of space. (Kinda like we are now discovering what a monumental waste of space are these houses with 3 story "Great Rooms")

Not too many farmers here store hay in a "barn" unless its an ex building that is falling down.
Sometimes they never make it out of the paddock and are Stacked along a fenceline with electric fence around to keep the stock off. lately I notice farmers are auto wrapping large round bales in plastic srtaight off the back of the baler I understand, making them look like giant dinasoar eggs.

Hay season is just getting underway here now.

Typically a hay shed would be used. Open sides, corregated iron roof.
Might be open on all 4 sides but mostly closed on at least two sides.

Has it been determined - yet - that "okie knows farming?"

Just curious; he seems not very knowledgeable about most other things. I want to give him credit for "some thing" during my lifetime.

We have this thing called "rain" here in Pa, so we have to store hay in barns. There was a thing called a "Big Round Bale" that was in vogue in the 1970's . It was a total waste of hay becase the rain didnt shed off the rpound bales as it was advertised. Many farmers would lose up to 50% of a bale from moisture damage, leaching, and just moldy hay.
Barns are the way to go. Even sheds dont work because we have to keep hay off the ground so it doesnt wick moisture.

I don't know if it has been mentioned that one large consideration for hay storage is the property tax costs for barns. It has become prohibitive in some areas, so that other solutions are becoming more attractive, at least in some areas.

The autowrapped big eround bales have led to a series of inventions that, in the severl years since their introduction, theyve become almost extinct around here. Too much plastic and extra work to unwrap and feed.
We used to use the 700 pound squqare bales but they too were difficult feesding without using a front end loader.

Farms (other than Hobby farms) are assessed at a lesser rate than housing and ag land is protected feom extra high tax rates (common for ruberbs) under several laws (Act 319 in PA for example). The state has been trying to protect farms from being swallowed up by development.

I see alot of round bales, farmer, and they seem to be often stored out in the open, on the edge of the fields. It seems that many farmers accept a percent of spoilage, rather than spending money to build more barns and pay higher taxes on them. Before my dad passed away, he used both, the big round bales in big round feeders, but he liked taking a few small bales out in his truck every day to enjoy watching his cattle come trotting over to have some. Registered polled herefords were his pride and joy. My folks were more than hobby farmers, but much of the time in their latter years, they made no profit from farming. I remember a neighbor saying often that he did not need to go to Las Vegas to gamble. His gambling habit was fulfilled by farming.

I believe that is silage.

From Wiki:
Silage is fermented, high-moisture fodder that can be fed to ruminants (cud-chewing animals like cattle and sheep)[1] or used as a biofuel feedstock for anaerobic digesters. It is fermented and stored in a process called ensiling or silaging, and is usually made from grass crops, including corn (maize) or sorghum or other cereals, using the entire green plant (not just the grain). Silage can be made from many field crops, and special terms may be used depending on type (oatlage for oats, haylage for alfalfa).
Silage is made either by placing cut green vegetation in a silo, or by piling it in a large heap covered with plastic sheet, or by wrapping large bales in plastic film.

I imagine you have a lesser rain amount than we. We have, on average 44" rain per year and thats enough to rot the big round bales , or else , at least leach out their nutrient value.
We do have a lot of the AMish use these plastic silos. These are those huge rollout plastic baggies into which they shovel "greenchop" and green hay to let it ensilate. It works pretty good and many dairy farmers use the method when they try to keep another loafing area in use all year.

We have a new system that stacks about 100 bales in a frame . We bale the hay and dont use a kicker. Instead the hay drops out on rows and my neighbor , who has one of these bale frame stackers, charges me 50 cents a bale to pull em off the field and put up in the barn in neat 100 bale bunches.
We get about 2000bales in the first cutting and then about half that in the second and third cutting. We dont always get a fourth cut , but this year we did.

Yeah, I think its about 35 inches per year, but maybe the hay is not put up until later in the summer, after much of the rain. But I still see much hay rotting out there too, including a few old round bales on my folks farm, along one edge of a field. I don't know anybody that claims to have the perfect answer to it all. It seems to be whatever trade-off that each farmer has to choose, depending on how much livestock and how much hay he raises and needs. A neighbor to my folks seems to have always done pretty well by pasturing his wheat crop until a crucial point when he takes them off of it so that it can then grow and mature for a harvest, rather than feeding so much hay. Many wheat farmers do that around there.

You do say some funny things okie.

I don't know whats so funny about it? Maybe I didn't phrase it real clear. What I mean is that by the time the hay is baled, a large portion of the 35 inches of moisture received during the year may have already taken place. So if a farmer is lucky, he can take some of that hay that he stores in the field and get it fed to the cattle that winter, without a tremendous amount of moisture impacting it. Obviously, every year is different in terms of when you get the moisture.

You are only making it funnier okie.

Okie, if you haven't figured it out by now. Parados has been using his world famous niggling on you. He rarely says anything concrete himself and he niggles away at what you say without ever actually addressing it.