Hay tarps, specified where they actually fail

Not in the US market as published. On five sizes carried by both vendors on 2026-08-20, the 16 mil listing was about 20 percent cheaper than the 12 mil listing every time, and at 25 x 54 ft a 17 mil cover was within one percent of a 12 mil one. Thickness does not order the prices, so it cannot be used as a shortcut for quality. The full table, with every price and its source, is on the specs and prices page.

Growers who have run both describe the failure starting at the fixing: a few inches of slack work loose in a windstorm, the flapping starts, and it tears the tie-downs out before the fabric wears. That points at grommet spacing, hem construction and the tie-down plan rather than at thickness alone. Published spacings run from 18 to 36 inches, a factor of two, and no vendor read in this pass explains what that changes.

Published sizes are flat dimensions, and a flat dimension is not a stack. The cover has to reach over the stack and down far enough on each side to be tensioned, so the number that matters is the stack height and shape, not its footprint. State the bale type, the stack configuration and the height in writing; we ask for the ones you leave out rather than filling them in.

Growers use them and say so plainly: cheap and tough, but with no grommets, which is why the ones who like them thread a pipe through the hem loop and tie off there. That workaround is the feature a purpose-built system sells. In snow country the same threads report billboard covers shredded inside a year. It is a real option with a named trade-off, and it is the price competitor to beat.

No, and published guidance says the opposite: hay needs to finish sweating before it is covered, bale temperature peaks about seven to ten days after baling, and covering too early risks heating and mould. A cover is storage protection, not a repair. We do not quote against a promise about how forage will keep, because that depends on the hay and the site, not on the fabric.

Mississippi State Extension publishes the figures for large round bales: stored on the ground for 12 to 18 months, covered loses 10 to 15 percent of dry matter against 20 to 35 percent or more exposed. The same publication puts the gap between ground and barn storage at 1,200 to 1,600 USD a year for a 30 head herd over 180 days in harvested hay, or 3,120 to 4,095 USD in purchased hay. Those are published extension figures, cited as such, not our estimate of your operation.