This will be my first winter in New England where I am 100% responsible for the horses. Previously, I boarded and hay was included. So when it came time to think about hay, I figured 2% of body weight of the two horses would come out to about one 50 lb bale a day. Then I looked at my rail thin Thoroughbred and decided that I never wanted her to go without, so I multiplied that number by 1.5. And I decided that I didn't want to buy hay again until I could get second cutting, so next August up here, at the earliest.
So I bought 10 ton of hay. 500 bales of hay, if you average 40 lb bales. Timothy. From Canada.
And it all came today. Wouldn't you know it, 500 bales of hay takes up a lot of room. I am sure I will look back on this and laugh, but I seriously think I went overboard. Those that know me personally know I never half ass anything. And I can honestly say I did not half ass buying hay.
So now there's hay in my garage. I removed the light bulbs that would be close to the hay. I put down a layer of pallets over the cement floor. Then I put down a layer of cardboard boxes broken down to lay flat (I just so happened to have some moving boxes handy) to soak up the moisture from the cold floor before it ruined the bottom layer of bales. Then I started stacking. And stacking. And stacking.
When the garage was full, I started stacking in the loft in the barn. There's enough ventilation in the barn, in fact too much (I found a hole in the roof tonight when it rained). I got 100 bales in the barn.
Then I moved to the trailer. In my three horse trailer, I stacked the remaining 20 bales.
Lucky for me, the horses like the hay. Lucky for them, they will be in hay until, oh, January 2010. Unlucky for my twelve year old car, it will not be garaged this winter. It's only fitting, since the hay cost more than the car.
I will likely try to sell some of the hay since I really don't want to feed the horses hay that old next fall. But until then, bon appétit!
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