By Donna Cecil

 How many flakes in a bale of hay?  That’s the question I was recently asked when an acquaintance, who purchased her first horse, was trying to figure how much hay she needed to have put up for winter.

Well, after I explained that her horse would consume more hay November through April when the pasture grass goes dormant and that snowballs aren’t very nutritional, she started to recalculate.  But when I explained that he would require almost constant hay during the bitter cold to fuel his furnace, (remember, the act of chewing roughage allows horses to generate their own heat), she just stared blankly.  Although I recommended figuring a bale a day in the colder months and a half a bale a day in the fall/spring and even less when out on pasture, she wanted to count flakes … no surprise, she’s an accountant.

In order to understand the size of a flake of hay, we’ll need to consider quite a few things:

First off, some of you might be wondering what exactly IS “a flake of hay”.  A flake of hay is formed by pulling in the dried legume/grass from the row by the baler.  Most equine lovers raising horses for years know the term “flake” has a deeper meaning, it is used to describe a thin, easy to “flake-off” portion of a rectangular bale.  Basically, a flake is a slice of a bale of hay.

Most people confuse the term flake with a unit of weight measurement, that’s not true.  Each bale of hay is formed with different layers, these layers or sections are referred to as flakes.  Flakes are formed through the compression that happens in the baling process; cut compress, tie with wire or twine, and spit out in a rectangular shape.

Unfortunately, the answer varies from flake to flake and from bale to bale.  The number of flakes in a hay bale is dependent upon the size and the weight of the bale, as well as the amount of hay and how much is compressed.  Not to mention, the type of dried grass that is contained in each bale of hay, as well as if it is first cutting hay (which has more stems) or second cutting hay (which has less stems).  More hay equals larger flakes and more compression leads to denser flakes.  Consequently, all flakes are NOT created equally.

Taking all that into consideration, we can form some generalities:

• A typical flake of hay weighs between 2 to 5 pounds.
• Each flake is usually about 12 to 18 inches wide.
• The thickness of a flake can range from 2 to 6 inches.
• The size will vary depending on the type and cutting of hay.
• If you’re desperate to calculate, figure an AVERAGE of 12 flakes per bale.

I was always taught it is better to have too much hay than not enough.  After all, it doesn’t have an expiration date when it will go bad.  I’m sending you best wishes with that calculator!