Hay Cap

Whenever I drive through ag country, it's like an agricultural icon. Whether it's square or round bales of hay, there they are and towards the end of the summer they all have tarps pulled over them and secured with some form of ropes or tires or something. It always looks jerryrigged. Isn’t there something that could be done about that? Enter the Hay Cap, developed in Australia, which looks like a little plastic roof that sits exactly on top of each bale. Here is what the company writes about them: Heavy duty hay bale covers that protect large square bales (3x3, 3x4, 4x4) from rainfall. Take less than a minute to apply at ground level.

Made of thick heavy duty recycled plastic making them durable enough to last 10-20 years!

 

I thought to myself, okay great, you’ve got five bales sitting on top of each other with a little plastic cap or roof. But when you look at it the sides of the bales are completely exposed. What about a driving rain into the sides? Here’s salesperson Nick Longsworth: “Hay is very tight and rain doesn’t seem to penetrate from the side just from the top down.” Nick told me that water runoff from the top misses the side of the stack and when rain does hit the sides of the bales it results in about a 1” stain on bale ends and no damage inside the bale