Kosten der Belüftungsheuerzeugung in Boxen oder Ballen

Summary

The production of ventilated barn hay results in a high quality fodder for ruminants. Nevertheless, this production method is still a niche in Germany even it is found in
organic farming. Reasons are the few publications about required investments of the needed technology for hay drying in the barn. This article provides investment and
energy costs for different drying techniques: for box hay drying three different farm sizes were compared, for bale hay drying only one farm size is calculated. Bale hay
drying demands more power and investment cost as box hay drying of loose hay. Bale drying is more complicated than barn drying in that the number of bale drying locations
in a barn is a limiting factor to throughput, as is also the drying of densely packed bales. Barn drying is above all practical on farms where hay is the only forage on offer.
Its particular advantage is the large amounts of crop that can be dried at the same time. Bale drying tends to be applied more on farms that want their forage partly as
grass silage and partly as barn-dried hay.