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Northeast Iowa | Just did some this week with a tubeline wrapper and white plastic, so I won't be able to give you firsthand experience for another month or so. The custom operator bought his H & S wrapper last fall and had only done baleage thus far, so I'm his guinea pig on dry hay. We used about half as many wraps as with baleage. He suggested we try cutting some slits in the plastic in a few spots to allow the 50-bale row to breathe. We may go in at a month or so and pull a bale out of the center of the line to see what it looks like. If it's a disaster, we can always unwrap the bales and have some bedding. If it is working, we can do more of the remaining cuttings that don't get made into big square bales.
It was $6 per bale for the dry hay and $8 per bale for baleage. We made 60" baleage bales and 68-69" dry hay. I also made some baleage bales for a friend with dairy goats. We'd make a bale and see if his skid loader could lift it. Then we'd adjust our size upward and finally settled on 52". The wrapper had no problems with the larger bales of dry hay. I sell most of my hay (Cows calve in mid-May and hay is more of a revenue item instead of an expense.) and used to go a full 72", but there's one set of stoplights between here and a customer that prefers 68" bales to 72" bales on a semi. Don't ask how I know that. If the wrap preserves color, it will be pretty easy to recover $6 per bale at a hay auction or from direct sales without building a hay shed.
We may try wrapping some cornstalks this fall, too. Quality preservation isn't as critical as hay, but it may work for convenience of net wrap removal after a winter like this past one. The wrapper operator figured he could use even less wrap on cornstalks, so we may be able to get down to $5 or even $4 per bale. We make about 1,000-1500 round bales per year, so a tubeline wrapper made more sense than wrapping individual bales or using bale sleeves. It also eliminates the need for a bale hugger to move individually wrapped bales around, or carrying a lot of tape with you to cover spear holes.
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wrapping hay
