Check your hay

[SPIKER]

I was in the AirForce Hydraulic Repair shop, LOTS of oily rags: if one was left out of the rag bin @ night you would recieve a repramand! had to empty the Self Closing Rag Cans every night too, they were fire rated and had a air tight fit on the top so no fire would make it out as no air could feed it. though I never saw any SMOKING rags I do know it an happen... even worse was working with the Magnisum Rim and Brake materials! you CAN'T put that stuff out! pour sand over it and it will burn it's self out but it won't go out! makes the sand into glass! definately don't want to add water!


We had a big hay fire when I was a kid, down the street, happend to a kid I was in FFA with, Kevin and I were same age and while the barn was not a total loss the hay was as was his steer /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif smoke got him, it was anice TIGHT barn, afterwards the firemen added a bunch of air holes to what was there... they only biailed about 20 acres so there wasn't a heck of a lot of hay there but it was the 2nd or 3rd cutting and late in year, bout this time as we hadn't gone back to school but was a few weeks away...

I hadn't heard about the wizzing in the hay thing though as it was kind of common when working the barn to go out the upper window more for the cool breeze but maybe could have been due to the moisture too!? that was just where I was told was the mens room /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif


Mark M
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[BigEddy]

Next door <1km away /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif > we had a hay fire last week. It has been really WET this summer! Neighbour went to move a couple of big sqare bales from a stack of maybe 40 put up last year. 20 minutes later smelled smoke. Bottom of the next bale in line was on fire. 10 tankers later they were still fighting it. Luckily the pile was away from the house and sheds and downwind so no real harm done, other than 40+ big bales gone. Took about a week before it stopped smoking though and every time went to spread some more, would burst into flames again.

Guess that with all the rain the bottom of the bales were pretty wet, and moving the end ones provided a fresh supply of oxygen to the ones in the middle.

Worst thing was the heat melted all the twine, so there was no way to pick the individual bales up and move them away. All could do was "bulldoze" it out onto the field while hosing it down.

 

[kensfarm]

I checked the temps on some of the bales last night.. most of the bales showed 110F.. I had half a dozen bales get rained on.. one of them showed 130F.

My final count showed 228 bales.. on the first day using the baler.. I had a few mis-ties.. but when I baled Tues.. it didn't miss a one.

 

[DaveNay]

Ok...now you guys are starting to get me worried. What is the simplest or best way to check the temperature? As a quick probe, I am thinking an 8' length of black pipe cut on an angle (like a hypodermic), and then threading the indoor/outdoor thermometer with the 10' temperature probe down the length of the pipe after spearing the bales.

As you can guess, I don't have anything to do this with, and haven't checked the temps before.

Dave

 

[cowboydoc]

Dave,

Them make two kinds of probes. One is a temperature probe that you can stick into the bale and tell how hot they are. There is a digital readout on the end of the probe. There is also a moisture tester that will tell you what the moisture of the hay is.