How many acres necessary to make it worthwhile to do your own haying?

[atsah]

Thanks guys.

Has anyone else noticed how posting on a mobile machine (my initial post was on an iPad) results in all sorts of screwups in the posting? I can barely read what I posted...

Mine does the same thing, don't know why using my phone does that but I find if I go to the full site it doesn't do it as much..

 

[wagne223]

Mine does the same thing, don't know why using my phone does that but I find if I go to the full site it doesn't do it as much..

It is because Apple software is not compatible with anything but Mac based systems. It has to be converted and sometime the conversion adds characters.

That is why people that deal with a lot of files created on a windows computer, use Android based phones and tablets.
Windows and Android are friends.

 

[atsah]

It is because Apple software is not compatible with anything but Mac based systems. It has to be converted and sometime the conversion adds characters.

That is why people that deal with a lot of files created on a windows computer, use Android based phones and tablets.
Windows and Android are friends.

That makes sense.. It's a pain typing on a phone anyway..

 

[Argonne]

I've thought about using round bales. Several of the local horse farms use them and seem to do fine.

Once I decided that I was going to try round bales, I overthought and over-engineered the daylights out of the project, having been worked into a frenzy by watching youtube videos about people chainsawing and unwinding round bales to use them piecemeal. None of that has been necessary for us.

The bales go into an alcove in the barn and are stored there on the concrete floor. They are round side down during storage. With that slick concrete floor I can re-spot those bales easily with my 25hp CUT loader. They slide, I don't even need to roll them.

The "in-use" bale gets flipped on it's side, (carefully with the CUT loader, don't become a tiddly-wink!) flat side down, and the net wrap is peeled off. Peeling hay off of the roll couldn't be simpler, we just use a pitchfork, plunging down from the top and about 6 inches into the bale to peel off a section. How heavy that section will be depends how far along the circumference and how deep into the roll you plunge. My disabled wife has no problem at all doing this, and often as not, she's using hay that uncoiled from the roll and is resting against the floor.

If the horses are pastured, which is usually, we load the hay into our 6x4 M-Gator and drive it out to a Vee type feeder out in the pasture where it gets forked into the feeder. We do that operation twice a day, and the horses don't get anything else to eat except for a token amount of grain as a treat (and a way to get them to back off while we fill the feeder).

 

[Bigfoot62]

I have a couple hundred grand in tractors and hay equipment. Can I justify it? Not really. I could buy what hay I need a lot cheaper. Here's why I do it:
1. I like it! The pure satisfaction of producing a crop. Love being on the farm. I tell people that I have a "day job" so I can afford to farm.
2. I figure it's better to process the grass into hay and sell what I don't need, than to just bush-hog all the pastures. (I have 110 acres, about half of it in hay meadows)
3. Tax benefits. Since I'm in the hay business, I can buy new equipment and write it off.
4. Timing. As the OP has already pointed out, you usually can't find someone to do it for you on YOUR schedule. I don't know what the situation is in your area, but around here, good luck in finding anyone to do it at all.

 

[aczlan]

It is because Apple software is not compatible with anything but Mac based systems. It has to be converted and sometime the conversion adds characters.

That is why people that deal with a lot of files created on a windows computer, use Android based phones and tablets.
Windows and Android are friends.

Actually, what it is is that this site only supports basic punctuation, for example a straight up and down single or double quote versus one that's angled to one side or the other (the specific set of characters is called ASCII, it has 128 characters available).
Mac (or Microsoft Word) by default use the angled or curved single and double quotes which is why they show up with the funky characters here (they are part of Unicode which adds a lot more letters, but also takes up more space than ASCII).

I am not sure why they don't switch to Unicode but I'm sure there's a good reason for it.

Aaron Z

 

[wagne223]

Actually, what it is is that this site only supports basic punctuation, for example a straight up and down single or double quote versus one that's angled to one side or the other (the specific set of characters is called ASCII, it has 128 characters available).
Mac (or Microsoft Word) by default use the angled or curved single and double quotes which is why they show up with the funky characters here (they are part of Unicode which adds a lot more letters, but also takes up more space than ASCII).

I am not sure why they don't switch to Unicode but I'm sure there's a good reason for it.

Aaron Z

Thanks for the clarification.
Learn something new every day!

 

[vvanders]

Actually, what it is is that this site only supports basic punctuation, for example a straight up and down single or double quote versus one that's angled to one side or the other (the specific set of characters is called ASCII, it has 128 characters available).
Mac (or Microsoft Word) by default use the angled or curved single and double quotes which is why they show up with the funky characters here (they are part of Unicode which adds a lot more letters, but also takes up more space than ASCII).

I am not sure why they don't switch to Unicode but I'm sure there's a good reason for it.

Aaron Z

Not to nitpick but as someone who's spent way too much time dealing with unicode as long as you're encoding in UTF-8 they take up the same space as ASCII, assuming you stick to the same 128 characters. Once you go beyond that UTF-8 takes more by way of a variable length encoding.

Those angled single and double quotes are nasty for all the mentioned reasons.

While most modern software deals in unicode these days plenty of legacy stuff out there and unless you're targeting a non-latin character set it only rarely rears it's head, like in this case.

Anyway, back to the thread, great discussion and certainly interested for some of our future acreage as well.

 

[powerscol]

Once you do it yourself you will never want someone else to do it. There is something about doing it yourself. Shop for a good MOCO for cutting as alfalfa needs conditioning. You will need a decent rotary rake and possibly a tedder. The baller is the key unit not to skimp on. If you buy too old you will be very frustrated. I have a Hesston 4550 inline that I love. Check around at you dealers on a decent trade in, or even you local agg rental dealer. That's where I got most of my good used equipment. Other area is estate auctions.
Hope this helps

 

[Dadnatron]

Powerscol, I’m from SW Colorado originally. Durango, Mancos, Cortez area. Parents currently in Dolores mail, but actually out in the country.

BTW... I really miss the mountains. Kentucky Bluegrass is beautiful... but Lone Cone is my favorite place on earth.