# Can we talk gardening/waste hay?



## Georgiamainers (Apr 30, 2011)

This is our first spring with the goats and we know they waste a lot of hay.   We have some big waste hills already and I just cleaned out the stalls from the winter. Yuck!  

 How do you use your waste or poopy hay in your veg garden??  Do you  turn it into compost first?  How long does that take??  I've read you can put it straight in the garden or wait for compost.  

We're in Maine and usually have our garden going first week of June.
I'm interested in doing a no-till garden this year and I thought of laying all this waste hay on last year's garden.  But, if not we have a tiller to turn this stuff into the soil.

Please share some tips on what you do.


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## elevan (Apr 30, 2011)

You can either compost it or lay it on the garden and till it in.  I've done both.  Just depends on the amount and what mood I'm in...

As to hay waste from feeders...some hay feeder designs are better than others to help eliminate waste.  Do a search on the forum to find some ideas for better hay feeders.


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## redtailgal (Apr 30, 2011)

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## Georgiamainers (Apr 30, 2011)

Making a  hay feeder is BIG on my to do list.  I mean the list I put in front of my husband.


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## DonnaBelle (May 1, 2011)

HA! HA!  Husbands to do list.  My husband says " I can't get my list done because your list is on top of my list".  LOL

I would do a lot of things myself if A. I was strong enough. B. I knew how to use a hammer and a saw.  C. He wasn't a retired building contractor that can build anything he sees. But he would rather play on his tractor or with his chainsaw.

DonnaBelle

PS: should add:  he built one of those key hole hay feeders, and it does work really well.  So far, no problems with fighting.


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## patandchickens (May 1, 2011)

If it is grass or mostly-grass hay, there is a good chance it will have at least some (potentially many) mature seeds in it, of the hay itself and of weeds. (Yes, I know that in theory hayfields have no weeds and the hay is cut before the grass is so mature as to set seeds, but meanwhile back in teh real world...)

It takes a year or two of composting to render most of those seeds. So if it would annoy you to have weed seeds (esp. grasses) coming up in your garden, you might consider just piling the stuff to sit for a year or two.

Alfalfa hay does not generally ahve seeds in it tho.

Pat


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## carolinagirl (May 1, 2011)

A guy I work with has been rolling a round bail of hay out on his garden every year for mulch and weed control.  He rolls it out thick, and tills it in at the end of the season.  The hay is Coastal Bermuda if that makes any difference.  His garden is always very productive with no weeds.  I plan to start doing this myself.  I can get a huge round bail of last-years hay for $25.


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## freemotion (May 1, 2011)

I threw down a thick layer of used bedding (almost all hay) from the goat's winter stalls in the pathways of my gardens last year and it worked great!  The only weeds that came up were a few clumps of oats.  Oats are easy to pull and I let them grow and fed them to my favorite goats as they visited me through the fence when I was working in the garden.

I'll be doing it again this year.


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## Ariel301 (May 1, 2011)

I use the waste hay as mulch in the vegetable garden. We live in a very hot and windy area, so piling about 6 inches of hay on top of the ground around the plants, burying the drip irrigation line, keeps most of the water in. It breaks down slowly and becomes part of the soil and I just keep dumping more on top of it. I don't really till my garden, the natural soil here is sand, clay, and rocks, so I dug it all out and filled the area back in with compost and waste hay.


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## julieq (May 1, 2011)

We use straight alfalfa pretty much so the loose stuff we don't feed to the horses we just use between the rows in the garden.  Really helps keep the weeds down and also we don't have to water as much.  We don't till.


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## Roll farms (May 1, 2011)

Like others, I lay it between rows to keep the weeds down.


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## chandasue (May 2, 2011)

Similar here as everyone else. We have terrible sandburs and grass issues in our garden that we're in the process of eliminating so we actually torch the garden late fall to kill the weed seeds before tilling in wasted hay/pooh compost. Then we till in the rest come spring before planting. The loose hay gets put in the rows, around fruit trees and over potatoes over the course of summer. Compacted stuff gets put in the compost bin for fall again.


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## warthog (May 2, 2011)

I used to compost mine.

But now I just put thick layers straight on the garden as a mulch,  it's grass hay and fingers crossed I have not had a problem with seeds sprouting.

I also find my free range chickens help turn it over when they are scratching around for bugs, so good for all.


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## RockyToggRanch (May 2, 2011)

I compost mine. I have 2 horses and mix it with their manure piles. It helps to make a beautiful compost in a yr. I've used new straw to mulch the garden....never again! I should have just planted oats.

Last yr we used rolls of brown paper in the garden aisles. DH works at a paper mill. We put straw on top of that...oats again. 

I think I may try the goat stall bedding this yr.

I have plenty of composted manure and plenty of goat bedding to spare. I hope the weed seeds have been baked by deep litter or eaten by chickens.


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## Georgiamainers (May 2, 2011)

I guess we are concerned more about fresh poop in the veggie garden instead of aged manure.   

Do you have a separate poop pile and a separate waste hay pile?   (I know some poop ends up in the hay anyway)


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## freemotion (May 2, 2011)

I don't worry about the poop from healthy herbivores that live on my farm (so I know how healthy they are.)  Horses, goats, cows....on the garden.  Dogs, cats, chickens, pigs.....not on the garden.


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## stano40 (May 2, 2011)

DonnaBelle said:
			
		

> But he would rather play on his tractor or with his chainsaw.


Now there's a man who enjoys his leisure time.

Georgiamainer, I live in southern Maine & last year I started tilling in my waste hay from the goats into the garden.  I also have a huge pile of waste hay as compost.

I used the waste hay also in between the row and around the veggies to keep the weeds down.  At one point I was using my shredder to lessen the pile of hay, but since my shredder broke I'm back to just piling it up.

bob


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