How much does the hay or wheat hay bale weigh?

“How much does the hay bale weigh?” This question can be rather unreasonable and fun for people who aren’t involved in agriculture or animal husbandry. Farmers obviously understand that, first of all, the health of their livestock and net salary and many other things depend on the quality and quantity of harvested animal feed.

 

The most important feed ingredients for cattle and small ruminants commonly are hay or haylage, and wheat hay also can be used. For this reason it’s very important to properly prepare the required amount of hay and store it well using classic baler twine or baler net wrap. When you know how much hay or wheat hay you need, you can count the right numbers of agricultural equipment and people for harvesting, also prepare a storage place of the desired size and stock up a fair number of materials for packaging. It is necessary to know the weight and extent of hay bale.

The weight of the made-up bale hay depends on the kind of crop species and how it was prepared and wrapped up. The animal feed can be packed in square or round hay bales and its weight will vary depending on the equipment and its settings.

 

However, there is no common “standard” for hay bales and balers, which work during the hay harvest, can form them in different sizes, and, consequently, in weight. Everything depends on the capabilities of the equipment and the settings that the operator has set.

 

We asked our customers about the hay bale weight and averaged the findings. The result is the following: the modern world’s leading brands balers bale dry wheat hay with a density of about 130-140 kg/m3 into cylindrical hay bales and about 160-170 kg/m3 in large square hay bales. It is possible to bale the wheat hay with a higher density of 15%.

 

If we have the density of baling and know the size of the hay bale, we can easily calculate the weight of 1 straw roll on particular equipment.

For instance:

We can find out the weight of cylindrical hay bale with 1.2 m width 1.5 m in diameter using the formula:

 

M= v*p, where

p = density,

m = mass,

V = volume.

 

For a cylindrical hay bale, the calculation is slightly different:

 

М= 3.14*r2*h, where

r = radius of the cylinder,

h = height.

 

If the straw roll is not baled properly, it can be determined even by guess and by gosh, it is deformed even under its own weight. And you can determine approximately the weight of 1 hay or wheat hay bale using the formulas above.