page_title: Hay
section_title: Early methods
hierarchical_section_title: Hay / Making and transporting hay / Early methods
context_page_description: Hay is grass, legumes, or other herbaceous plants that have been cut and dried to be stored for use as animal fodder, particularly for large grazing animals raised as livestock, such as cattle, horses, goats, and sheep. However, it is also fed to smaller domesticated animals such as rabbits and guinea pigs. Pigs may also be fed hay, but they do not digest it as efficiently as herbivores.
  Hay can be used as animal fodder when or where there is not enough pasture or rangeland on which to graze an animal, when grazing is not feasible due to weather, or when lush pasture by itself would be too rich for the health of the animal. It is also fed when an animal is unable to access pasture, e.g. the animal is being kept in a stable or barn.
context_section_description: Early farmers noticed that growing fields produced more fodder in the spring than the animals could consume, and that cutting the grass in the summer, allowing it to dry and storing it for the winter provided their domesticated animals with better quality nutrition than simply allowing them to dig through snow in the winter to find dried grass. Therefore, some fields were "shut up" for hay.
  Up to the end of the 19th century, grass and legumes were not often grown together because crops were rotated. However, by the 20th century, good forage management techniques demonstrated that highly productive pastures were a mix of grasses and legumes, so compromises were made when it was time to mow. Later still, some farmers grew crops, like straight alfalfa (lucerne), for special-purpose hay such as that fed to dairy cattle.
  Much hay was originally cut by scythe by teams of workers, dried in the field and gathered loose on wagons. Later, haying would be done by horse-drawn implements such as mowers. With the invention of agricultural machinery such as the tractor and the baler, most hay production became mechanized by the 1930s.
  After hay was cut and had dried, the hay was raked or rowed up by raking it into a linear heap by hand or with a horse-drawn implement. Turning hay, when needed, originally was done by hand with a fork or rake. Once the dried hay was rowed up, pitch forks were used to pile it loose, originally onto a horse-drawn cart or wagon, later onto a truck or tractor-drawn trailer, for which a sweep could be used instead of pitch forks.
  Loose hay was taken to an area designated for storage—usually a slightly raised area for drainage—and built into a hay stack. The stack was made waterproof as it was built (a skilled task) and the hay would compress under its own weight and cure by the release of heat from the residual moisture in the hay and from the compression forces. The stack was fenced from the rest of the paddock in a rick yard, and often thatched or sheeted to keep it dry. When needed, slices of hay would be cut using a hay knife and fed out to animals each day.
  On some farms the loose hay was stored in a barrack, shed, or barn, normally in such a way that it would compress down and cure. Hay could be stored in a specially designed barn with little internal structure to allow more room for the hay loft. Alternatively, an upper storey of a cow-shed or stable was used, with hatches in the floor to allow hay to be thrown down into hay-racks below.
  Depending on region, the term "hay rick" could refer to the machine for cutting hay, the hay stack or the wagon used to collect the hay.
  Hay baling began with the invention of the first hay press in about 1850.   Hay was baled for easier handling and to reduce space required for storage and shipment.  The first bales weighed about 300 lb.  The original machines were of the vertical design similar to the one photographed by Greene Co. Historical Society.  They used a horse driven screw press mechanism or a dropped weight to compress the hay.  The first patent went to HL Emery for a horse powered, screw operated hay press in 1853.  Other models were reported as early as 1843 built by PK Dederick's Sons of Albany, NY, or Samuel Hewitt of Switzerland County, Ohio.  Later horizontal machines were devised, such as the “Perpetual Press” made by PK Dederick in 1872.  They could be powered by steam engines by about 1882. The continuous hay baler arrived in 1914.
caption: Late 19th century hay boat with small square bales
exif: {}