Сено

Стог сена

Округле бале сена (рол бале)

Сено је осушена трава и лишће осушена на сунцу и ваздуху која се користи као животињска храна. Количина влаге смањује се сушењем са приближно три четвртине у зеленој трави на приближно једну петину у осушеном сену. Сено се обично прави од попиног прасета, луцерке и детелине. Траве се секу обично на њиви или на ливади док су још зелене, а онда се суше. Сено се компресује у правоугаоне бале и везује се жицом или канапом, а често се складишти у облику стогова. Сено представља основну кабастог дела оброка за преживаре (говеда, овце, козе) и коње, богат целулозом. Код примитивних раса домаћих животиња сено, заједно са кукурузовином, чини једино храниво у току зиме.

Најбољи услови за производњу сена су у довољно влажним долинама и пољима са умереном континенталном и атлантско-приморском климом, затим у планинским котлинама, шумским пропланцима...

Косидба се врши ручно уз помоћ косе или машинама (механичке косилице и самовезиваче), а затим се скупља ручно вилама или машински.

Композиција

Commonly used plants for hay include mixtures of grasses such as ryegrass (Lolium species), timothy, brome, fescue, Bermuda grass, orchard grass, and other species, depending on region. Hay may also include legumes, such as alfalfa (lucerne) and clovers (red, white and subterranean). Legumes in hay are ideally cut pre-bloom. Other pasture forbs are also sometimes a part of the mix, though these plants are not necessarily desired as certain forbs are toxic to some animals.

Oat, barley, and wheat plant materials are occasionally cut green and made into hay for animal fodder, and more usually used in the form of straw, a harvest byproduct of stems and dead leaves that are baled after the grain has been harvested and threshed. Straw is used mainly for animal bedding. Although straw is also used as fodder, particularly as a source of dietary fiber, it has lower nutritional value than hay.

It is the leaf and seed material in the hay that determines its quality, because they contain more of the nutrition value for the animal than the stems do. Farmers try to harvest hay at the point when the seed heads are not quite ripe and the leaf is at its maximum when the grass is mowed in the field. The cut material is allowed to dry so that the bulk of the moisture is removed but the leafy material is still robust enough to be picked up from the ground by machinery and processed into storage in bales, stacks or pits. Methods of haymaking thus aim to minimize the shattering and falling away of the leaves during handling.

Close view of loose grass hay.

After harvest, hay also has to be stored in a manner to prevent it from getting wet. Mold and spoilage reduce nutritional value and may cause illness in animals. A symbiotic fungus in fescue may cause illness in horses and cattle.

Poor-quality hay is dry, bleached out and coarse-stemmed. Sometimes, hay stored outdoors will look like this on the outside but still be green inside the bale. A dried, bleached or coarse bale is still edible and provides some nutritional value as long as it is dry and not moldy, dusty, or rotting.

Стогови

Haystacks are stacks of harvested hay, stacked in many different ways depending on region of the world, climate, if baled or loose, and so on.

Hay requires protection from weather, and is optimally stored inside buildings, but weather protection is also provided in other ways involving outdoor storage, either in haystacks or in large tight bales (round or rectangular); these methods all depend on the surface of an outdoor mass of hay (stack or bale) taking the hit of the weather and thereby preserving the main body of hay underneath.

After World War II, British farmers found that the demand outstripped supply for skilled farm laborers experienced in the thatching of haystacks. This no doubt contributed to the pressure for baling in large bales to increasingly replace stacking, which was happening anyway as haymaking technology (like other farm technology) continued toward extensive mechanization with one-person operation of many tasks. Today tons of hay can be cut, conditioned, dried, raked, and baled by one person, as long as the right equipment is at hand (although that equipment is expensive). These tons of hay can also be moved by one person, again with the right (expensive) equipment, as loaders with long spikes run by hydraulic circuits pick up each large bale and move it to its feeding location.

A fence may be built to enclose a haystack and prevent roaming animals from eating it, or animals may feed directly from a field-constructed stack as part of their winter feeding.

Haystacks are also sometimes called haycocks; among some users this term refers more specifically to small piles of cut-and-gathered hay awaiting stacking into larger stacks. The words (haystack, haycock) are usually styled as solid compounds, but not always. Haystacks are also sometimes called stooks, shocks, or ricks.

Loose

Loose stacks are built to prevent accumulation of moisture and promote drying, or curing. In some places, this is accomplished by constructing stacks with a conical or ridged top. The exterior may look gray on the surface after weathering, but the inner hay retains traces of its fresh-cut aroma and maintains a faded green tint. They can be covered with thatch, or kept within a protective structure. One such structure is a moveable roof supported by four posts, historically called a Dutch roof, hay barrack, or hay cap. Haystacks may also be built on top of a foundation laid on the ground to reduce spoilage, in some places made of wood or brush. In other areas, hay is stacked loose, built around a central pole, a tree, or within an area of three or four poles to add stability to the stack.

One loose hay stacking technique seen in the British Isles is to initially stack freshly cut hay into smaller mounds called foot cocks, hay coles, kyles, hayshocks or haycocks, to facilitate initial curing. These are sometimes built atop platforms or tripods formed of three poles, used to keep hay off the ground and let air into the center for better drying. The shape causes dew and rain water to roll down the sides, allowing the hay within to cure. People who handle the hay may use hayforks or pitchforks to move or pitch the hay in building haycocks and haystacks. Construction of tall haystacks is sometimes aided with a ramp, ranging from simple poles to a device for building large loose stacks called a beaverslide.

Loose hay stacks and hayracks

• 
  Hay cocks in a field in Ireland
• 
  A beaverslide with a full stack of hay in Montana, USA
• 
  Kozolec, a traditional Slovenian hayrack

Сигурносни проблеми

Farmer's lung (not to be confused with silo-filler's disease) is a hypersensitivity pneumonitis induced by the inhalation of biologic dusts coming from hay dust or mold spores or other agricultural products. Exposure to hay can also trigger allergic rhinitis for people who are hypersensitive to airborne allergens.

Hay baled before it is fully dry can produce enough heat to start a fire. Haystacks produce internal heat due to bacterial fermentation. If hay is stacked with wet grass, the heat produced can be sufficient to ignite the hay causing a fire. Farmers have to be careful about moisture levels to avoid spontaneous combustion, which is a leading cause of haystack fires. Heat is produced by the respiration process, which occurs until the moisture content of drying hay drops below 40%. Hay is considered fully dry when it reaches 20% moisture. Combustion problems typically occur within five to seven days of baling. A bale cooler than 120 °F (49 °C) is in little danger, but bales between 120 and 140 °F (49 and 60 °C) need to be removed from a barn or structure and separated so that they can cool off. If the temperature of a bale exceeds more than 140 °F (60 °C), it can combust.

To check hay moisture content, the farmer can use hand, an oven or a moisture tester. The most efficient way is to use a moisture tester which shows the moisture content in a few seconds.

Due to its weight, hay can cause a number of injuries to humans, particularly those related to lifting and moving bales, as well as risks related to stacking and storing. Hazards include the danger of having a poorly constructed stack collapse, causing either falls to people on the stack or injuries to people on the ground who are struck by falling bales. Large round hay bales present a particular danger to those who handle them, because they can weigh over 1.000 lb (450 kg) and cannot be moved without special equipment. Nonetheless, because they are cylindrical in shape, and thus can roll easily, it is not uncommon for them to fall from stacks or roll off the equipment used to handle them. From 1992 to 1998, 74 farm workers in the United States were killed in large round hay bale accidents, usually when bales were being moved from one location to another, such as when feeding animals.

Hay is generally one of the safest feeds to provide to domesticated grazing herbivores. Amounts must be monitored so animals do not get too fat or too thin. Supplemental feed may be required for working animals with high energy requirements. Animals who eat spoiled hay may develop a variety of illnesses, from coughs related to dust and mold, to various other illnesses, the most serious of which may be botulism, which can occur if a small animal, such as a rodent or snake, is killed by the baling equipment, then rots inside the bale, causing a toxin to form. Some animals are sensitive to particular fungi or molds that may grow on living plants. For example, an endophytic fungus that sometimes grows on fescue can cause abortion in pregnant mares. Some plants themselves may also be toxic to some animals. For example, Pimelea, a native Australian plant, also known as flax weed, is highly toxic to cattle.

Литература

• Мала енциклопедија Просвета — Општа Енциклопедија (М—Ш). Издавачко предузеће „Просвета“, Београд 1959.
• Zhou, Yiqin. Compar[ison of] Fresh or Ensiled Fodders (e.g., Grass, Legume, Corn) on the Production of Greenhouse Gases Following Enteric Fermentation in Beef Cattle. Rouyn-Noranda, Qué.: Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue, 2011. N.B.: Research report.
• Karl Heinrich Ritthausen (1872) Die Eiweisskörper der Getreidearten, Hülsenfrüchte und Ölsamen. Beiträge zur Physiologie der Samen der Kulturgewachese, der Nahrungs- und Futtermitel, Bonn, 1872 from Google books.

Спољашње везе

• Hay Harvesting in the 1940s, instructional films, Center for Digital Initiatives, University of Vermont Library