B-Wrap™: The alternative to indoor storage

Once upon a time, if you wanted to preserve top hay quality, you had just one choice. Indoor storage. Not anymore. Today there's B RAP available from John Deere dealers. V RAP protects hay from rain and from snow. Plus B RAP can dramatically reduce bale damage from ground moisture. It's the alternative to indoor storage. It's your best wrap for your best bales. Delivering barn quality hay without the barn and B RAP is easy to use. It works in your baler much like netwrap. You operate the baler as you always have. When the bale reaches full size, the wrapping process begins. A pre measured length of V wrap is applied to the bale first. One revolution of coveredge netwrap securing crop material around the edges of the bale. Next comes a patented material with Tama SCM technology. This material protects the bale from snow, from rain and ground moisture. Plus the material has microscopic pores that let water vapor escape from inside the bale. Two more wraps of coveredge netwrap secure the B RAP to the bale. Built in fasteners keep the net firmly in place. With bale wrapping complete, B RAP is automatically cut at the correct length and the bale is ejected. Ready for whatever mother nature has planned for the next year. B RAP works with Most John Deere 7, 8 and 9 series round balers. With a dealer installed kit, your baler can switch between B RAP and netwrap. And switching is quick and easy. It takes less than five minutes. B RAP bales do look great, but what's really amazing is the hay quality. After months of outdoor storage, first thing.

We noticed probably was the spoilage issue on the bottom of the bale. On the regular net wrap bale, we had about six inches of spoilage on the bottom from where it sat on the ground. The B RAP bale we had none. Last winter we did a side by side test. Net wrapped hay and B wrapped hay. Both bales came from the same field. They were actually baled the same day. We unrolled the net wrap bale first, just the regular net wrap. Cows went to it. We came back up and unrolled the B wrapped bale second. And every cow that was in the net wrapped bale went to the B RAP bale in a matter of about 30 seconds.

And we're starting to use more straw on our dairy rations. So that gives us extra incentive to use the B rap. And this year we've baled well over 400 bales with it. It helps stretch our corn silage out and it's really been a good fit in our ration. We found out last year that after using the bales with the B rap on it, they were just like the day we baled them, there was just very little loss at all. We went probably from a 15% loss to about a 2 to 3% loss. You know, it was just as nice and clean as straw.

There's a lot of guys around that are using the plastic wrap for even dry hay. And you know the bad thing about the plastic wrap versus the B rap is the plastic wrap is not breathable. And a lot of times that hay will get a moldy layer right under the wrap because that moisture has nowhere to go with the B rap. It actually lets the hay breathe and you don't have that mold there. We've seen time and time again, cattle will go to the same hay that's got B rap on it and eat it before they will the net rap hay out the same field bale the same day.

We got a corn, soybean, alfalfa farm. Farm about 200 acres of alfalfa. Well, we were introduced to the B rap last July.July of 2011 and we kept both around for a comparison. And you can open up the B rap hay today. And it looks like the day we baled it and our mesh wrapped hay kept very well, but not near like the B wrapped hay. There's an auction company south of us in that Kelowna area and we have sold hay there before.