If you are into livestock farming or agriculture business, you will certainly deal with straw and hay bales storage issues. Though there are so many ways to store hay bales and each of them offers its own set of benefits, there is nothing like sheds to store hay bales and straws. Effective storage and management of hay bales and straws are essential to receive optimal results from the feed. If you keep them uncovered or store outside, they are likely to get affected by external atmospheric conditions, water penetration, wind or storms, which will ultimately affect their quality. This will also lead to a loss in the nutrient value of hay which will ultimately affect your livestock's health.
Tips To Follow
Hay sheds are an effective storage solution, but again, if you opt for constructing hay sheds, you must consider certain factors and then proceed. We have enumerated a few of them below:
ü Think about how you will access your shed: The most important thing you need to think of while building hay sheds is how you will be getting hay bales into and out of the shed. Most often tractors are used to bring out hay from the shed and load it back. So, if your shed consists of poles in between then, tractors will not move easily and more time will be utilized to load and unload. Therefore, you must choose a design that doesn’t require the construction of poles, so that you get ample open space and tractors can easily get in and get out from the shed. Also, in the offseason, you can use that open space for other storage purposes.
ü Adequate ventilation: While building hay sheds keep in mind that it has open sides that facilitate air circulation and cross ventilation. This is an important point because if sheds don’t have any ventilation feature, then moisture and heat will build up inside the shed which will lead to mould development and ultimately destroy the feed kept inside. So, make sure that sheds have at least one open side to allow fresh air circulation.
ü Determine a proper location for sheds: Deciding about hay sheds' location needs to be thought through. The optimal location would be such that it is close to paddocks, and it should give you easy access to the machinery. However, you need to check about the ground condition beforehand whether it is wet or not or any water drainage issues. Otherwise, you will face water retention around your sheds, which will be extremely disadvantageous for you in the future. And if you have any plans of building one more shed in the shortly make sure to build it at some distance so that fire in one could not travel to another.
ü Size of the shed: While building hay sheds always consider both your present and future needs. The design and construction of shed should be such that it can fulfil your current needs very well and offer you the facility to expand it when required as per your future needs. The shed should be structurally strong and sturdy enough to easily add another bay in the future or add extra structures for storage of machinery when required.
These are some of the factors that you need to consider while constructing a hay shed. Sheds always provide long-term benefits by reducing transportation costs, labour costs, giving tax benefits, protects machinery and tools from harsh weather conditions and prevents nutritional loss of hay and straws. All these benefits are enough to help you make an informed decision to build hay sheds on your farm.
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