Stacking Donna's and Wyatt's hay

Now that I baled Donna's and Wyatt's hay it was time to put the bales in the hayshed.

I put all the bales on two layer of pallets.  To keep them off the ground because even with dry ground moisture can work its way up from the ground into the bale.  And also, in the Spring as snow melts outside the shed the water can seep up the ground inside the hayshed in low spots.

The first row appeared to go well.

What a nice looking stacked row.

Looks are deceiving. I had stacked those bales the evening before.  As I started the second row the next day I double checked the first row.  The top bales were leaning against the back of the hayshed and the middle posts started to lean outward slightly.

Not good.

I took the top layer down and tried to restack it so not to lean against the wall.  The bales wanted to fall towards me as I tried to remove the bale spear.  So I had to re-stack the second layer.  Same thing.  The bales wanted to fall towards me as I removed the bale spear.  So I had to re-position the first layer further from the wall.

Now the second and third layers wouldn't balance.  I re-stacked and re-stacked and re-stacked.  Nothing worked.  I have stacked three layers before and got it to balance.  Not with these bales. Finally I got the idea of using boards to hold the bales while I created the second row.  The plan was for the first and second rows to lean against one another.

That was the plan.  One time I got as far as having only one board left holding the bales.  But when I removed the board the third layer came falling down.  I ran like mad and escaped the falling bale.  The board was broken into three pieces.   My final try had the third layer balancing when I removed all the boards.  When I started to build the second layer of the second row suddenly down everything came.

As you can see the bales were getting compressed and misshapen.  I swapped these bales out for fresh round bales.  Still I couldn't get it to work.

One time when the bales fell, one bale ripped all the twine off another bale.

Also when the bales fell they would flex and the twine would loosen.  Not good either.

So after hours of trying to make this work I gave up.  The first row has only two layers.  The rest of the rows have three layers.  The third layer of the second and third rows lean back towards the first row.  That is ok as the pressure appears to be on the first row's second layer and not on the back wall.