Is new hay flammable? / News

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Often we receive the question whether fresh hay is flammable. After all, you hear almost annually that a barn burns down due to fresh hay. So what’s the deal with this? We’d like to explain it to you.

When hay is too fresh or cut too early and pressed a bit too wet, you get a deadly cocktail of rich grass, moisture, and fermentation that we talked about earlier. Such a bale of hay can then reach an internal temperature of several hundred degrees. Often, nothing is wrong at this point. However, when a bale of hay is opened, oxygen enters. Then you have the combination of fuel plus oxygen plus ignition temperature, and for anyone who can remember their chemistry lessons, these are the three ingredients for combustion. Hay fires actually always occur with hay cut in May or during a second cut, where the moisture content must have been too high, or pressed too quickly.

Hay to you maintains a maximum moisture content of 15%. At this margin, hay can become warm and even ferment a little after cutting, but then you have no chance of it getting so hot that a fire can start.

How do you find out how moist your hay is?

If you don’t have a moisture meter yourself, there are three things you can do to see how your hay is doing.

First, you can send a sample to analyze your roughage. Choose a cheaper variant, as the values (except for dry matter) can change somewhat due to conversions. With such an analysis, you will receive a result of the dry matter in percentages. At 85% dry matter, indicated as DM in an analysis, you have 15% moisture in the hay. You can calculate moisture in this simple way: 100 - DM% = Moisture%.

Apart from measuring moisture, you can also feel and smell it yourself. That’s the second option. Hay that is fermenting will start to smell a bit. This smell is best compared to shag or tobacco scent. If you start to smell this very strongly, it is an indicator that your hay is fermenting.

Finally, it is always good to feel if the hay is getting warm in the first few days. With large bales, it’s best to pull a few bales apart and feel in the middle of a bale. Hay between 30 and 40 degrees has an acceptable temperature. And how can you feel this by hand? It’s actually very simple. The pain threshold of humans lies somewhere between 40 and 60 degrees. If it hurts when you feel the heat, then it’s not good!

Be careful with feeding when there are signs of fermentation

The above actions should be done immediately after haymaking. If you didn’t make the hay yourself or if the hay has been lying for a while, you can often still see if the hay has fermented. By laying a bale on its side, you have better visibility. Signs of fermentation can be recognized by an oval ring of discoloration, which is often a bit browner and less fresh in smell. Sometimes those spots are also a bit harder. When you open this bale, you will often encounter ‘burnt’ parts in the bale. It’s better not to feed these parts. There is often a lot of mold in them as well. If you find such spots in our hay? Don’t feed it and contact us immediately. We are happy to resolve this for you!

Hopefully, after reading this article, you can better assess the moisture quality of your hay and whether your hay is good or not. This way, you can confidently buy new hay that you look forward to because fresh hay always smells so nice. Did you know that Hay to You always mentions the cutting date and the date from which you can safely feed new hay? This way, you can order with confidence and easily calculate if you might still need old hay as a bridge. If you would like advice? Please contact us. We are ready to help you, with a little love from a hay fork!