Weight of a bale of hay

[willhegofirst]

We were talking about this at the yard the other night as we have the large bales now, what weight is a good sized small bale of hay? From what I remember they used to be between 45 and 55lbs or has my memory gone completely!!

 

[Magnetic Sparrow]

I reckon 20-25kg so roughly 45-55lb, yes.

 

[tazzle]

weighed ours with luggage scales last week and they are quite heavy bales compared to average we have and they are 24 -25 kg each ( about 53lbs)

 

[Echo Bravo]

Depends on who's baling and how they adjust their baler.

 

[Mike007]

Typicaly a conventional bale used to weigh about 20 kg (50 bales per tonne), at 45 bales per tonne the stuff was proibably damp when baled(makes it pack much tighter in the bale chamber). Much above 50 and the bales tended to fall apart when moved. The ideal was to produce a bale 3 ft x 18 " x12" so that it stacked well on a lorry ,with good tight strings. Class the brought out balers which had a bale chamber 18"x14" so in order to make bales that would stack well,they had to weigh about 25kg (40 per tonne). The big problem was that these were great for mechanical handling ,but absolute murder to stack on a lorry.The biggest problem hay merchants have always faced is the apparent inability of horse owners to reccognise that a bale weighing 25kg must cost more than a bale weighing 20kg and make rational value judgements.Of course the big bales are simply too big to weigh so the situation is much worse. with these the average customer has absolutely no idea how much hay they are getting. PS, Straw used to average 60 bales per tonne)

 

[willhegofirst]

Thanks for your replies thats great, glad I was in the right ball park.