Nasty Birds...

I remember a few years ago...a local shopping mall was having issues with crows hanging out on the roof...making a mess of things.  The "powers that be" were trying to decide what to do about the dirty birds.  Someone suggested that they try to relocate the birds to some farms in the area, where they wouldn't be a nuisance.  Hmmmmm...

#1.  Did you ever hear of a bird being told where to go, or where to stay?

#2.  Do you know of any farmer who really wants a huge flock of crows hanging out on his farm?  Or even a small flock, for that matter?

They are a nuisance...not only are they dirty birds, but they can cause a lot of damage.

Most of our balage ag bags are close to the buildings, and appear to be fine, but we have a couple of groups of bales along the edge of a field that seem to have attracted some unwelcome visitors!

Take a look at these...they look fine from a distance, but if you look closely, you can see a black hole on the bottom right side of the bale closest to the camera...

We've been finding holes like this all over these round bales.  Some of them are at beak level (if the crow was sitting on the ground) and a lot are on the top edges of the bales, as if the birds were sitting on top and leaning down over the side.

This hay was baled wet, and needs to be completely air tight in order to be properly cured and preserved.  When air gets inside the plastic, the hay starts to get moldy, and can eventually be ruined.  Not only does it not taste good, it can be dangerous for the cows to eat.

Most of the holes are rather small, but here's a larger one on the top of the bale.  That plastic is really thick, so the crows had to be really determined to get at whatever they thought was inside.  They most likely were hoping to find some grain.  Too bad for them...

So...armed with my "tools", I headed out to try to repair the damage...

There were sixteen bales in this group, and I used almost all of the ag bag tape to cover the holes tightly, hopefully sealing them in time to prevent further damage.

The first bale that we found with holes in, has been opened up and doesn't appear to be moldy, so we are hoping that we caught them in time!

There's always something to keep us on our toes!