Article: Hay in a day (when to condition . . .)

[chh]

Post some pics of that if you get a chance Deereman. I have never worked in or cut any alfalfa.

Here in Oklahoma this time of the year with the temps at or above 100 degrees I can mow grass hay in the morning start round baling it with no conditioning, tedding, or preservatives by 3 or so in the afternoon. We have been working on a schedule of cut one afternoon and bale starting before 10 AM the next morning most of the summer. We are starting to switch to a cut early and mow for about 3 to 4 hours, take a bit of a seista and go back and start baling schedule on fields that are not too large.

 

[HayDR]

This past June a farmer cut the field beside my house with a haybine, field was a good crop of well fertilized fescue that got good rain while growing. He cut the field after lunch, swaths about 4 feet wide, round baled it from the swaths at 5:30 that afternoon, hauled it away before dark. He puts it in a continous long roll of some type of white plastic, his rolls get about 200 feet long beside his calf barns. He says the forage will be as good 2 years from now as it is when he puts it in the plastic. No raking and not much problem with rain.

Being from the same area I can assure you fescue is mature in our area in mid to late May. If you are cutting fescue in June the crop has basically lost allot of it's food value and has begun too cure before it was cut. Also take into consideration the our area has been in a drought situation for 2 years now. The hay crops this year have been yielding 60-70% of normal yields. There is a lack of moisture in the ground and the hay has less moisture in it as well.
The process that you describe with hay being wrapped by plastic in a tube is not dry hay but haylage. Haylage is hay baled at 35-60% moisture and encapsulated in an anaerobic environment for pickling. Dry hay should be baled in the 12-20% moisture range.

 

[Grrrr]

oh it is possible on the family farm we are doing it we cut the hay with a 10ft mower mounted on a front 3pt hitch and 2 10 ft mowers on the rear 3pt hitch it lays the hay flat to help dry quick and around noon (if we cut the hay in the morning) we come back with a 30 continious hay merger to pile the 30 ft of hay in a row and around 3pm we come back for the final time with a John Deere 6750 self propelled chopper with a fifteen ft hay head we use 16 ton h&s copper boxes with put of the roof removed so the tractor and wagon can drive along side the chopper and we can keep chopping with out stopping we put the feed into bunker silos and we pack the bunker with a Case IH MX270 with a 12 ft blade mounted on the rear 3Pt hitch we can chop up to 120 to 150acres of hay in 1 day. i will try and post pictures down the road

This is very similar to how it happens in the UK, except we sometime cut earlier and it dries for longer, because the mowers have to be able to keep ahead of the harvester, which covers the acres much faster.

Some recent pictures for your enjoyment (I was driving the John Deere, you wouldn't see me in the New Holland - tis a crap tractor and the air con packed up on the way to the job so was about 100 degrees in there, open the window and you get covered in grass. lol. The Deere on the other hand is pure luxury.) :








































This is not me, but someone else.

Mowing on the front, baler behind with built in wrapper.

One pass harvesting.

 

[Deereman4020]

you guys chop in a similar fashon to how we do it on the family farm the only difference is you guys use dump trailers and we use h&s 7+4chopperboxes with front and rear unload mounted on 16 ton running gear

 

[Grrrr]

you guys chop in a similar fashon to how we do it on the family farm the only difference is you guys use dump trailers and we use h&s 7+4chopperboxes with front and rear unload mounted on 16 ton running gear

Yeh, thats something I've noticed.

We use the tractors because most of our fields are always wet and lorries would get stuck, and in the UK we cannot be over a total weight of 26T when we are on the road.

The trailers we use aren't really dump trailers, they are purpose built silage trailers, with mesh sides. They work very well.

 

[mark.r]

Great pictures. Mowing and baling at the same time, must take a bit of horsepower.

 

[Deereman4020]

we pull the wagons with 2 case ih 7120s and 2 case ih 7110s

 

[Grrrr]

Great pictures. Mowing and baling at the same time, must take a bit of horsepower.

Yeh. That tractor is about 185HP I think.

It must be a PITA when you are first getting started on the field, because maneuverability must be tricky.

Also, if there was a slope to the field, you must have to reverse over some uncut grass sometimes to line the bale up so it doesn't roll away.

I also can't see how it would corner very well, because when you are baling you have to overshoot the turns to let the baler pickup get to the end of the row. I think it would be a straight lines job.

 

[Renze]

The guys in England/Ireland, as well as my friend in Finland, harvest their grass much greener than in Holland - dont know why, just an observation.

 

[Grrrr]

The guys in England/Ireland, as well as my friend in Finland, harvest their grass much greener than in Holland - dont know why, just an observation.

I think it is partly because we have the ability to collect the grass much quicker than we can cut it, and have contractors do everything.

So, we have no option but to cut right up till the moment the harvest arrives, and still then continue cutting just a few hours ahead of the collecting team.

The contractors want to move onto the next farm quick, so it is not uncommon to see a forage harvester, or a baler, following directly behind a couple of mowers and a rake.