After cutting the hay we wait a few days until it's dried just right. Sometimes we're lucky and mother nature does this for us and other times we have to rake the hay (essentially flipping it over) so the underside will dry. Making sure your hay is dried just right but isn't too dry is the most important step in the process. Sometimes it takes 3 days other times if it gets rained on or there isn't any sunshine it feels like it can take forever! A lot of times for our small bales we bale at night so that there is dew on the hay for a nicer bale. We have straight alfalfa, alfalfa-grass mixes and native grasses that we raise and each of course is a little different!
Our ranch makes both large round bales, which we mainly keep for use on the ranch, and small bales, which we sell primarily as horse hay. There is a little more forgiveness in the round bales, the hay doesn't have to be perfect because we are feeding it to cattle. But I have quickly learned that people are very, very picky about what they feed their horses. Somewhat reasonably so but somewhat crazy. It can't be too wet when baled or it gets moldy, it can't be too dry because it looses it's leaves and becomes stemmy, it should be a nice green color, etc.
Once you finish with this you race to get the hay out of the field and to the stack yard so that any rain, wind or wandering cows can't damage it!
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