New guy, looking for more opinions.

[Jerry/MT]

I posted before about a rough rocky field. Looks like picking up rocks will become the nightly walk for a while. I'll try to get the field rolled, if I can find anyone, but I've not heard of anyone with a roller.

My hay guy complained that the rocks damaged his mower and the rough field was too much wear on his rake, but his round baler was fine. So to make this a little easier for him (or his replacement), I'm thinking about using my 60" rotary mower next year, buying a 12' 3 point rake and only paying to have someone round bale it. It looks like the baler is the expensive, high maintenance implement in this process anyway.

If that works out, I'll invest in a disk mower. I have a 31 hp Massey Ferguson 1250, which is a little light for a good mower. I plan on replacing it in about 5 years. The field should produce about 60 ton, but I only need about 20 ton for my sheep (so the losses due to using a brush hog shouldn't be an issue).

Here is a picture of the grass that he left because he didn't want to tear up his rake. The alfalfa really took off after this photo was taken. We've had a lot of rain for this time of year. I do not expect to get another cutting this year though.

View attachment 710159

Maybe you should invest in a roller and roll your hay ground in the spring. Then your neighbors can make your hay without fear of damaging their equipment. You say you have excess hay to your needs so do the hay on shares and whatever excess you have, sell. You'll need a tractor or a pick up to pull the roller but you won't have to invest in mowers, rakes, and balers.

 

[rankrank1]

I suppose some rotary cutters do better than others, but I made hay for several years using my little Kubota L285 and a 5 foot genuine bush hog brand rotary cutter so yes it can be done.

The hay was equally as good in quality as the haybine type mower conditioner that I use today on the same fields with same crops. The rotary cutter even acts a poor man's conditioning system in it will actually improve really low quality type stemmy grasses making them more palatable to eat to the animal. On grassy type crops this will work fine on more leafy crops like alfalfa you will loos some leaves so not the best choice for those crops.

I can tell you your yield loss will be more than 20% that you are hoping for but will not be 50% like many claim it will be. I would say about a 33% will be atypical average give or take a bit. Back when I started I did not care about that though as I was getting zero of it so getting even 67% of it was fine for me. In really tall and thick hay though your travel speed will be quite slow on a small tractor with limited hp which is really the only reason I quit doing hay with the hog. That said it is still my back up cutter for hay if the haybine breaks. No other cutter exists that will operate as cheap, if you have the time to deal with how slow it can be in really heavy crops.

If you are committed to proceeding? Doing anything that discharges the cut material as fast as possible will help you. Run the tail of hog a little higher than the front is easy to do for better discharge. As mentioned by another poster back in the day many company's made what was called a hay side cutter. In essence a part of one of the side panels unbolted for better discharge for cutting hay. If you buying a hog look for one of those. If you already have a brush hog then a little creative metal cutting can add that feature to an existing unit for not much $ if you handy. Design it such that the piece you cut out can be bolted back in though for non-hay duties.

 

[rankrank1]

an old thread of mine that the pic links still work

Hobby haying pics with a compact tractor and bushog

Well here are some pics of hobby haying with: a) An older compact tractor. A Kubota model L285F of around the year 1977. It is about 26 PTO hp. b) An old square back genuine brand Bushog as the cutter. c) JD model 594 rake which I reurbished (this dates to somewhere between a 1940-1948 year...

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