I'm not sure where that information comes from. We are grass but in Alfalfa yes tedding has the potential to remove the leaves which remove nutrients. The quicker its baled the more nutrients so without conditioning it may take longer to dry. same with tedding vs not tedding. The goal is to get it baled as soon as possible. Also the reason behind preservatives added to dry hay. Push that window even more.
That information comes form local farmers, I don't know if it was based on any real data maybe more on feeling and personal observation, we are strong on timothy grass so maybe conditioning it removed lots of seed from it, but we see some farmers removing the conditioner on their cutter and some re installing it when they buy a used one that has been removed or some hating it and some loving it...I am just trying to get a better understanding of it. So longer it dry or take to dry less nutriments there is in it? I know if you conditioning it, it puts the hay in a row, so one as to rotate it or tedding it within a shorter window in order to dry the bottom of the row. For legume grass more you rake it more seeds you loose so less nutriment you get so there is that also. When cutting without a conditioner it is equally distributed on the ground so you can leave it there for longer since it is drying equally. May be it has to do more on the type of grass whether it is better without vs with
... I also heard that conditioning it squeeze some ''juice'' (water that contained nutriments) out of the hay which would remove some nutriments compared to without one the water evaporate leaving more nutriments in it.... is it true I have no clue.
That information comes form local farmers, I don't know if it was based on any real data maybe more on feeling and personal observation, we are strong on timothy grass so maybe conditioning it removed lots of seed from it, but we see some farmers removing the conditioner on their cutter and some re installing it when they buy a used one that has been removed or some hating it and some loving it...I am just trying to get a better understanding of it. So longer it dry or take to dry less nutriments there is in it? I know if you conditioning it, it puts the hay in a row, so one as to rotate it or tedding it within a shorter window in order to dry the bottom of the row. For legume grass more you rake it more seeds you loose so less nutriment you get so there is that also. When cutting without a conditioner it is equally distributed on the ground so you can leave it there for longer since it is drying equally. May be it has to do more on the type of grass whether it is better without vs with
Thought I would bring you over here to my thread with your question to Hay Dude if you don't mind. Don't know if you have seen this thread.
It has always seemed to me that a dairy farmer's job is never done, I worked at a dairy some during high school and those cows had to be milked twiced a day and there was always the corn planting for silage and then haylage , fence fixing, equipment breakdowns, repairs, etc, there was never a vacation for the dairy farmer.
Same observations from my experiences.
That's a shame that it ended up like that for them, but as hard as it is for us to understand sometimes, "there is a reason for everything".
The last year I milked I decided during the winter I was going to milk 3 times a day. Go through at noon and milk all the cows producing more than 80 or 90 lbs of milk. Never happened as that fall I leased out the cows and started the different venture. I was spreading manure one summer day and after closing the gate i could not get back on the tractor. Had to pull myself up as I could not put pressure on either knee. It was at that point I knew something needed to change. For the last year it had gotten to the point where I could no longer run, Climbing a ladder I could only use my one leg because I couldn't put pressure on my other knee. We milked in tie stalls so milking was constant squatting and repetition that my knees couldn't take I guess. About 600 squats per day 7 days a weeks. Even now if I stress my legs out it will come back. There is a position at UPS where your up and down stairs all day long and covered that for a week and by end I could only walk up the stairs putting pressure on the one leg.