How to Not Explode a Bale of Hay

You are making too many trips to the feed store to buy small bags of hay or straw, so you decide that it’s time to buy a bale. After the store has loaded it into your car, you get it home and wrestle it into your storage area. When you cut the baling wire, you wish you hadn’t. You have just opened Pandora’s box. It may take several messy bales before you discover the steps:

1. Turn the bale so that one end is toward you and the three bands of wire, or twine, are parallel to the ground.

2. At the end facing you, clip the bottom wire and the second wire but not the top.

3. Bring your bunnies’ haybox right up to the cut end and pull hay out from the underside of the bale into the haybox.

The top wire stays on to hold everything in place. As the hay gets used, you can tighten up the top so that it continues to hold the diminishing bale.

See how easy that was.

House Rabbit Journal Spring 1997: Volume III, Number 9