When large round hay bales came along, those of us who had cut our agricultural teeth on stacking small square bales thought we’d never need to put hay bales in a stifling hot barn again.

As snow falls and winter descends, a lot of agricultural work is slowing down. But for farmers with livestock, they’ve got to make sure their animals have enough to eat through the long cold months.

30 October 2020, Lower Saxony, Ronnenberg: Bales of straw, decorated with faces, lie at the edge of a field. Photo: Moritz Frankenberg/dpa (Photo by Moritz Frankenberg/picture alliance via Getty ...

We plan to fill our hay barns with roughly 50 tons of small round bales. Nothing marks the onset of summer for me like making hay. In Kansas, we often get our cool-season meadows put up by mid-June.