PRESERVATION OF FORAGE 25 



exposed to moisture that may fall on the half-cured hay 

 either as dew or rain. Where the drying is long pro- 

 tracted, much additional labor is entailed by spreading 

 the cocks each favorable morning and recocking in the 

 evening until cured. 



While the difficulty of thus curing grass hay is great, 

 it is far less than in the case of legumes. Grasses have 

 slender, usually hollow stems, and persistent leaves, while 

 most legumes have solid stalks that are relatively thicker, 

 and consequently dry much more slowly. Furthermore, 

 the leaflets of legumes dry first and fall off easily when 

 the hay is half cured, so that if much handled a large 

 portion of the leaves may be lost. In addition, legume 

 hays do not shed rain water as well as do grass hays, the 

 latter indeed often being put on the top of shocks of legume 

 hay to shed moisture. 



Cut hay should never be handled while wet. If the 

 surface hay was best cured before the rain, as would be 

 the case in the swath, it is in the most favorable position 

 to dry promptly. If in the windrow, the stirring of the 

 hay while the surface is wet brings this moisture in con- 

 tact with the drier hay beneath, by which it is readily 

 absorbed. 



Unfavorable weather greatly increases the cost of hay- 

 making, both in requiring more labor and in causing 

 greater loss of leaves from the more frequent handling 

 necessitated. 



Continuous rains do but little more damage to freshly 

 cut hay plants than to the uncut plants, at least during 

 the first three or four days after cutting. Cured or 

 partially cured hay, however, loses by leaching. Headden, 

 at the Colorado Experiment Station, compared alfalfa 

 hay exposed to warm humid weather for fifteen days, 



