There are a couple of guys up the road from my mom's house who have adjoining cow pastures. I drove by the other day and saw where one of them had piled up several round bales and burned them. I got to the next guys place and both of them were out in his field watching a pile burn. I don't understand why. Is there some good reason you would burn hay? Like if something was wrong with it?

Are you sure they set them on fire?
Hay bales can catch on fire, especially when baled too green and stacked.
Since the fields join, I'd bet they cut and baled them at the same time, and put it up too green.

Saw a barn burn in wilsonville last summer because of this.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This. Guy who does electrical work for us at work had this happen to him last year. Lost tractor, boat and whole barn.

The man who cuts hay on our land has hay from 2017 he was trying to get rid of just a few weeks ago. Loaded up semi trucks, one or two a day, going out to Texas mostly at little or no profit just to get rid of it. Still has some 2018 hay left for sale. He skipped a cutting last year and is doing the same this year because of the glut of hay.

Perhaps burning it is better than watching it rot while eating up space.

If it was hay burning from being baled too green, it would have to be hay cut this year. I doubt there's any hay in north AL that's been baled more than a month and that's pushing it. If it's new hay it should be pretty evident from the color of the outside of the roll. New hay would be a greenish/grey/tan color. If it was brown it was old hay that they were burning to get rid of.

My guess is left over hay that probably wasn't any good to start with.

That’s my nugget of knowledge for the day. I just read up on the chemical chemical reaction for spontaneous combustion of hay bales. Never heard of such.

Dr. B

I fought a hay bale fire twice as a volunteer firefighter. That stuff is impossible to put out. If farmer hadn’t shown up with tractor and hay fork, the whole row would’ve went up.

A piercing nozzle works pretty well.

I thought we should have foamed it but that was above my pay grade.

I fought a few as well. Well, that's not really accurate, most of the time I stood a safe distance and made sure nothing else burnt.

My neighbor burns his old half eaten bales. Stinks to high heaven

The best thing to do to burning hay, is move the good stuff out from around it and let it burn.

In the bad drought we had a few years ago, some scum bag set hay on fire at my brothers house. He was out of town and I got the phone call. When I got there, I got the hay that wasn't burning away from it. It took me quite a while to get the volunteer firemen to quit trying to put it out. I didn't want the mess to clean up. If the person who set that hay on fire, had showed up that night, or for a month afterward I would have shot them, point blank in the head. It takes a sorry son of a gun to set a mans hay on fire and especially during a severe drought.

Y’all think hay is a tough fire try putting out a burning cotton module. You can’t.

I would think cotton would also be significantly more expensive of a fire.

If it's new hay may have been baled a lil damp
If it's old hay it was get rid of it
There is one way to put out a cotton module as crazy as it sounds pour kerosene on it and it will smother the fire as long as it's burning in the module

Very true. And it’ll smolder for about 13 years

Might have seen a snake crawl under the stack?

Being from Lubbock, Tx, I can verify this as fact. Baled cotton is another one.

That seems counterproductive.