UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



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I BULLETIN No. 980 A 



Contribution from the Bureau of Markets 

 and Crop Estimates 



J&f^ryim H. C. TAYLOR, Chief jfC^^wri. 



Washington, D. C. T November 16, 1921 



INSPECTION AND GRADING OF HAY. 



By H. B. McClure, Specialist in Hay Marketing, and G. A. Collier, Investigator 



in Hag Marketing. 



CONTENTS. 



Page. Page. 



Grades and inspection service 2 I Certificates of grade and their uses- 13 



How hay is inspected and graded 7 Uniform grades and inspection 15 



In theory, hay is inspected for the purpose of promoting better 

 business relationship between the various agencies engaged in hand- 

 ling or marketing hay, especially those which do not come into per- 

 sonal contact with each other, such as the country shipper and the 

 distributor. In actual practice the inspection often proves highly 

 satisfactory to one of the interested parties and quite the reverse to 

 the other. 



The necessity for inspection of hay arose with the advent of the 

 trunk-line railroads and the invention of the baling press. These 

 factors greatly widened the heretofore rather unimportant local 

 market by making it possible and often very profitable to ship baled 

 hay many hundreds of miles. As soon as baled hay was shipped in 

 appreciable quantities difficulties between shipper and receiver arose 

 because they did not have the same ideas as to what constituted cer- 

 tain qualities or grades, or they were unable to describe such qual- 

 ities accurately. 



Considerable progress has been made in the inspection of hay dur- 

 ing the last 30 years, as is evidenced by the large volume of business 

 done in the marketing of hay, but the inspection has not yet reached 

 a really satisfactory stage. 



It is the purpose of this bulletin to describe methods of inspection 

 in vogue to-day, indicate the relative merits of each kind, and give 

 information obtained by a comprehensive study of the subject re- 

 cently made in the leading hay markets of the country for the bene- 



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