When you are a livestock farmer, you must provide the best care to your investment. This means that you should not only provide the best medical services but also ensure that they have the right feeds. It is not easy to take care of livestock as different things need to be kept into consideration. As much as you might be putting a lot of efforts in ensuring that your cows and goats have the best diet, there are times that you might be forced to look for an alternative. This is because the output you will get as a farmer depends on how well they eat treated of illness and the shelter they have. With the climatic changes being witnessed, you should be ready as a farmer to handle the uncertainties that might come along, especially during dry seasons. These are times when not only the animals struggle to find the best feeds but also as a farmer lacks the way forward. The availability of hay in the market provides an option for the farmers, especially during the dry season when animal feeds are hard to come by. In most cases, you will get quality hay from a company that deals in baling them. There is a need to understand how to select the right buy grasping the qualities that make the best one.
You should understand that harvesting time is vital when it comes to getting hay. This is because the best hay has to have the desired leaf to stem ratio. This is to maximize the nutritive value of the feeds and the yield of the grass for your livestock. Hay is mostly harvested during the rainy season. This is the time when the nutritive content of the feeds is much higher. They are then compressed and baled for effective storage. Hay that was harvested during the dry season is not best for your animals as their nutritive value and yield of grass are much lower. On the same note, you should take the liberty of having a visual inspection done on the hay you seek to buy. This means that you should critically assess the hay as the bales do not indicate the moisture content of the feeds. When you fail to check on the moisture and storage status of the hay, you might end up buying or storing hay that is unsafe for your animals. This can cause other cases such as sickness and in the long run, causing a lot of damages.
You should also be keen on ensuring that the hay bales you wish to buy are free of foreign materials such as insects, weeds or trash. This is important as some of the weeds are poisonous to the animals hence need to be careful. You should understand that chances of your hay bales getting spoilt within a short time are much higher when there are insects and other pests such as termites. As a farmer, you might have recorded nutritional disorders in your animals. Most of these disorders are caused by foreign materials and weeds found in the feeds. This is why you need to be critical when inspecting the bales of hay you wish to buy.