Midwest/Southern hay cutting/baling... Why is it done the way it's done?

[Texasmark]

Whoa... Looks like you were puttin' hay up in Vietnam! Very good lookin' bales, too. I'd like a 30' trailer load, please.

What width is your cutter and tractor Hp?

Cutter is a 6' from Small Farm Innovations, Crandall, TX. Comes from Turkey. If you look close, his model number is on it. If you are tired of the problems you have to tolerate with a sicklebar, this is a sweetie. I initially was looking as disc mowers but was looking at used and the bottom of every one I saw had brass brasing blobs all over the bottom where the main sump/frame had cracked and oil leaked out....then there were all the parts and all. The drum is a totally different critter and cheap.

Tractor is the Branson 6530, 65 Cummins, 57 PTO. No problem for a smaller tractor other than weight. You need something on the left front to counter the right rear weight. When cutting it runs on the ground and has +/- variances to follow the terrain several degrees. But in the raised position it, like disc mowers is quite heavy. This one has a transport position where the whole shebang swings straight out behind the tractor and tractor tires determine overall width in transport.

One thing I added was the right hand (farthest out) steel rod can be replaced with a hyd. cylinder (they have kits, I made mine) and you can stow the cutter vertical, like discs for easier transport without having to swing the unit behind the tractor.

 

[Texasmark]

Nice Sudan. I always called it Sudex as a boy. Great hay. It will suck the life out of your ground. Takes a lot of fertilizer but cattle love the stuff. We usually got 2 cuttings, sometimes 3.

I figured 2 paid the bills, the 3rd was for toy purchases (net profit). Weather hit you on both ends. Usually drying problems on the front end with too much rain and growing problems on the rear with lack of rain. One of the really nice things about this particular seed is the small stems, even with the height I had, you can see by the bale picture, not much stem, mostly yellow rib leaf.

 

[Texasmark]

"When I was a boy back in the day we used a sycle mower, roll a bar take, and square baler."

That's how I do it now. JD #9W sickle mower, NH 256 rollabar, and a JD 24T baler. Slow, but it does keep me outta the bingo parlors.

I ran both a 14T and 24T for square balers, with sickle bar cutters or 1209 MOCOs, plus "parallel bar-side discharge" 3 pt and tricycle JD rakes in the 500 give or take a hundred so, series. Nice, reliable balers even though they were 40 years old when they were in my stable. Needed few parts but true to form, JD either had them in stock or I would get them out of their Dallas warehouse in 3-4 days.

 

[cat fever]

You wouldn't believe what I went through to get this mess bailed. I couldn't get it cut when it was a reasonable height due to an unseasonably wet June. The crop was a small stem, late maturing sorghum-sudan hybrid plant that kept growing well past the time a normal SS would have topped out and turned to flax. i worked on in for over a week....course I work alone and that is a hindrance.

Going to plant it again this year but hopefully the weather will cooperate and I'll be cutting it at around 4'. That length will tedder and rake up nicely for my round baler.

My equipment could not even come close to dealing with that. I'd be turning the cows loose and looking for them in the fall. :laughing:

 

[John Fitzgerald]

This morning our small creek got out of the banks, and was over 100 feet wide in places and probably 7 feet deep in the channel, flowing with about a 10 to 15 mph current. The creek was by far the highest I have seen it since I bought this place in September 2013. About an acre and a half to two acres of our hayfield is flattened and covered with small sticks, leaves, and woody debris from muddy backwater. Most of the debris is small and short (pencil sized), with some half rotten sticks up to a half inch or so mixed in. That part might have to be brush hogged for the first cut and leave the haying for the second cut (my guess). It's about two weeks until usual first cut. I am inexperienced with haying. A neighbor a few miles away does it.
Anybody experienced this problem? How did you fix it? Will disc mowers like my neighbor uses cut through this kind of stuff ok?

 

[John Fitzgerald]

Any answers? TIA.

 

[M5farms]

If its small debris the disk mower will be fine , I would be more concerned with and wire or string that got deposited in that area . you will have some that will get baled because the rake will drag it into the windrow

 

[John Fitzgerald]

I didn't see any wire or string. I picked up everything I could find that was over a half inch thick or more than a couple feet long. It's all kind of rotten woody debris and leaves.

 

[John Fitzgerald]

Going to post this in a new topic.