Has anyone sprayed dry alfalfa right before baling to reduce shatter?

[svenlylethor]

I live in Utah where it is very dry and has almost no humidity. On one of my farms I get a lot of dew in the morning for when I bale my hay but my other farm is by the mouth of a canyon and it constantly has high winds. I can never successfully bale hay with dew on it and if any wind kicks in I get shattering. However, my alfalfa typically dries within two days because of the heat/wind and my bales don't get bleached at all.

I've been thinking about ways I can prevent shatter and I'm wondering if anyone has ever successfully sprayed their alfalfa and baled it so it didn't shatter. I have a small square baler and was thinking I could hook up an ATV sprayer and have it spray the next windrow with a fine-tip sprayer so it's almost a mist. 5-10 minutes later when I come back to the next row, I can bale the recently misted hay.

I've also thought that I could spray a small amount of preservative just to make sure it doesn't get too wet and mold, and also installing a moisture meter in the bale chamber to make sure it doesn't get too wet.

Has anyone attempted to do this or made this work? It might get tricky adjusting pressure because my pickup speed may vary if I combine windrows, but I've been thinking about testing this and thought I'd ask for input first.

 

[bcp]

What time of day are you checking?

When I lived in the SW desert, most of the summer baling was done very late night or early morning. We were through by sunup at the latest.

Bruce

 

[hawkeye08]

Back before us kids were old enough to bale, Pa was out at night with lights. He baled as dew was coming on, paused when it got too heavy, and then continued when it was dry enough. He seldom baled past about 7am in those days. Later when my brother and I started baling, Pa changed his strategy and usually didn't start us baling until sun up, with 2 or 3 balers running, he didn't see the need to run at night.

If you get some during the night, but the wind drys it out too fast, you might add some lights and have a try and working the graveyard shift..

As for spraying, lots of variables, but an interesting idea. How would you get the spray to evenly cover all the windrow? It seems it would be too wet on top and too dry on the bottom. Seems too many farmers don't understand leaf shatter and bale all hours of day. I've seen bales that were sticks and dust, no sign of a leaf anywhere.

Best wishes, I hope you find a solution.

 

[svenlylethor]

Back before us kids were old enough to bale, Pa was out at night with lights. He baled as dew was coming on, paused when it got too heavy, and then continued when it was dry enough. He seldom baled past about 7am in those days. Later when my brother and I started baling, Pa changed his strategy and usually didn't start us baling until sun up, with 2 or 3 balers running, he didn't see the need to run at night.

If you get some during the night, but the wind drys it out too fast, you might add some lights and have a try and working the graveyard shift..

As for spraying, lots of variables, but an interesting idea. How would you get the spray to evenly cover all the windrow? It seems it would be too wet on top and too dry on the bottom. Seems too many farmers don't understand leaf shatter and bale all hours of day. I've seen bales that were sticks and dust, no sign of a leaf anywhere.

Best wishes, I hope you find a solution.

I have a JD 6430 with lights so I can bale all throughout the night (and I typically do) but I've used several weather apps that tell me the wind speed/gust, humidity, dew point, etc and I've sat there waiting for the perfect time to bale but those canyon winds have a mind of their own and it rarely makes a difference. I typically have no wind at sundown for a few hours and the wind kicks up around midnight and is off/on until the morning. I can only think of one time that I got dew at night because there was no wind... and I broke a needle on the baler. It was also my fourth crop at the end of September. :/

If I don't combine windrows, I think spraying the top would give me good enough coverage - it would definitely reduce some of the shattering that I get. For the most part I don't get a lot of shatter when I bale at dark for the first few hours but I'm just thinking of a way to make it even better. I added bale skiis to my baler and that did help with the leaf retention but I want to make perfect hay. I've seen those ton baler steamers but those cost waaay too much. If I could make a small steaming device, that would be perfect.

I was thinking about using my ATV sprayer and putting some adjustable misting nozzles on it. I'd use those to see if they would make a difference. I just need to figure out how to hook up the atv cable to my cab and add a switch to it so I can shut it off if I have to stop.

I figured it wouldn't be too difficult to try it out but I thought I'd ask to see if someone has done the same thing and had success.