Hay into hayshed

The weather forecast is for a good chance of rain the rest of this week.   After several days of warm and dry weather the hay bales appear to be dry after last week's rain.

The bales sat for a while as you can see the grass was stunted under the bales.

So I spent all day today putting the hay bales into the hayshed.

I discovered I had miscounted the number of hay bales I had made.  Not 57, but 59 bales.

First I had to move out last year's 20 hay bales.  I had to readjust the second level of the first row of this year's bales I had placed in the hayshed last week.  Those bales had settled and were now slightly resting against the back wall.

Then all day I got and stacked hay bale after hay bale.  The second row had three levels.  As you can see below one of the level three bales settled back against the first row's second level bales.  But this did not cause that second level to settle against the back wall.  So all is good.  At least until next year when I remove that bale.  Its tipping back makes it difficult to spear the bale to get it down.  The same thing happened last/this year.  I was able to finally spear last year's tipped bale but I also inadvertently caught the twine from the bale below and removed it.

Tipped bale on the third level of the second row.

The third row has the third level bales sitting correctly.

Once I had this year's bales into the hayshed I put last year's bales back in the shed. Every time I moved last year's bales more hay flaked off.  One bale fell so much apart that only the core remained.  The rest was in a loose pile that I had to gather up.  One pickup load of the loose hay I put in the barn.  The other I pushed into the hayshed as I ran out of time and light today.

This is the last I will move last year's bales until I take them out to feed the cattle. Even with the second cutting's bales and the neighbor's bales I will add later, I will still be able to feed last year's bales to the cattle this Winter.

As I put the loose hay into the barn Diamond tried to eat it out of the pickup.  Those cattle: when they have hay they want grass.  When they have all the grass they can eat, they want hay.

When I started the pickup after I finished unloading the hay, in the headlights I could see Mama had just given birth to a newborn calf in the loafing shed.  This being Mama I could not get close to see what sex the calf is.  That job will be tomorrow.