New to hay. rough rocky field

[Joe Batt]

I recently bought 20 acres with the plan of making hay now and transitioning to pasture as my flock of sheep grows. First thing I did was look for help.

The seed guy suggested tilling it up, because the field had been plowed about 5 years ago and was very, very rough (like too rough to using a normal mowing speed with my 30 hp tractor and 5' rotary mower). I had a farmer run the disk over it 2 passes, wait for it to dry, 2 passes wait for it to dry, then another peice of equipment that I think is similar to a giant clutipacker. This equipment was all huge ag stuff; dually 4x4 John Deere articulated tractor. It was much smoother at this point. The dirt clods varied from softball to smaller. I can drive the tractor in road gear over most of it now.

Then I planted it with a 8Ft Brillion Grass Seeder. It took about 16 hours of seat time. I had to make 2.5 passes to use up all of the seed. The family picked up rocks for about 3 hours, filling my hay wagon. We picked up everything that we saw larger than a softball. I'm sure we missed some.

...two months pass...

Now the weeds outgrew the alfalfa, so I had a hay guy come bale it. First he called and told me there are too many rocks in the first two laps and he couldn't use the haybine. He had someone else mow it with a disk mower. He claims they had to change the blades 29 times (surely I misunderstood him, right!?). He will only bale the minimum that I need for the sheep, because he says it's too rough for his rake.

Is that adding up? It does sound like leaving the cut, unraked weeds will be fine. I may run the rotary mower over it this fall. Next year, I'll look for someone with a sickle bar mower instead of a haybine. I am assuming that mowing it taller wlil be easier on the mower and the rake (and he may not be able to adjust the haybine).

Anything else I should do to make the field better? It's going to be hard to find these rocks and smooth the field without tillling it up again and I'm not looking forward to buying more seed.

 

[Jerry/MT]

I recently bought 20 acres with the plan of making hay now and transitioning to pasture as my flock of sheep grows. First thing I did was look for help.

The seed guy suggested tilling it up, because the field had been plowed about 5 years ago and was very, very rough (like too rough to using a normal mowing speed with my 30 hp tractor and 5' rotary mower). I had a farmer run the disk over it 2 passes, wait for it to dry, 2 passes wait for it to dry, then another peice of equipment that I think is similar to a giant clutipacker. This equipment was all huge ag stuff; dually 4x4 John Deere articulated tractor. It was much smoother at this point. The dirt clods varied from softball to smaller. I can drive the tractor in road gear over most of it now.

Then I planted it with a 8Ft Brillion Grass Seeder. It took about 16 hours of seat time. I had to make 2.5 passes to use up all of the seed. The family picked up rocks for about 3 hours, filling my hay wagon. We picked up everything that we saw larger than a softball. I'm sure we missed some.

...two months pass...

Now the weeds outgrew the alfalfa, so I had a hay guy come bale it. First he called and told me there are too many rocks in the first two laps and he couldn't use the haybine. He had someone else mow it with a disk mower. He claims they had to change the blades 29 times (surely I misunderstood him, right!?). He will only bale the minimum that I need for the sheep, because he says it's too rough for his rake.

Is that adding up? It does sound like leaving the cut, unraked weeds will be fine. I may run the rotary mower over it this fall. Next year, I'll look for someone with a sickle bar mower instead of a haybine. I am assuming that mowing it taller wlil be easier on the mower and the rake (and he may not be able to adjust the haybine).

Anything else I should do to make the field better? It's going to be hard to find these rocks and smooth the field without tillling it up again and I'm not looking forward to buying more seed.

No you are not being lied to. These hay guys have a lot of money tied up in their machinery and for what little they make on your 20 acres, they are not risk major damage to their equipment that is needed for their farms or ranches. A sickle bar won't eliminate the problem. A lot of mocos and haybines use sickle bar cutters.

You'll either need to pick the rocks (by hand or mechanically) or get a a heavy roller and roll them into the ground in the early spring.
I used to live in western Montana below the Mission Mountains and we had rocks galore. The big hay guys around us mechanically picked rocks when they re-planted, then rolled the remaining rock with heavy rollers. Every spring, they re-rolled the ground. They told m that e since they started rolling in the spring, they never broke a guard on their mocos.
If I were you I'd hire somebody with a big roller to roll your ground in the early spring to deal with your rock problem.

 

[sea2summit]

You likely brought a lot of rocks to the surface when you plowed and planted. If he changed blades 29 times he didn't do it in one day, if he put 29 new blades on or flipped them I wouldn't be surprised at all...but you wouldn't see me again.

As Jerry said, there's not real money in hay and I'd bet most just do it with equipment down time hoping to make an extra dollar or two so they're not going to tear stuff up to make the extra few bucks. Think about it, 20 acres you'll get 40-60 bales for about 20 hrs (minimum) of tractor time cutting, tedding (if needed), raking, baling, stacking, plus another 10-12 hrs of prep and moving equipment to the field so at $50/bale you're at 65-95/hr. If he's running a 100hp machine take away 5 gal of fuel an hour for cutting and baling then 2.5-4 for raking and stacking now you're 40-70/hr, blades are ~$5 so $35-65 an hr. Now does he have to move them from your property to store or sell them? That's more time and fuel. Keep in mind $35-65/hr has to cover the cost of machine payments (he's probably got the better part of 100k tied up in equipment), normal maint, emergency maint. End of the day he's dang near doing you a favor if you're not paying him to cut your grass.

 

[oldnslo]

Have you walked the field to see if there truly are that many rocks? Yes frost will push rocks to the surface but if you hand picked them and only two months passed I would certainly be surprised to see that many more grow.

 

[Torvy]

One of the jobs we often took as kids was picking rock. Keep at it, eventually it will be workable.

 

[Joe Batt]

I just took a spin around the field. I think the rocks that he's complaining about have surfaced since we collected rocks. They are in what was the roughest area. I suspect they were under some dirt and the rains washed them off. I probably should have search for rocks a couple weeks after planting (we had a week of good soaking rain after we planted). So, OK. I understand the rock problem. I have some teens. I can address this.

The roughness problem. It's much smoother than it was. Most places I can drive 10 mph in the CRv, but not everywhere. Is that going to be a problem long term with a hay field?

 

[Joe Batt]

A little more context. I'm paying him by the acre to make the round bales and leave them in the field. We get about 6 ton/acre/year here (3 cuttings). Sounds like guys and here charge about $25/acre to mow, condition and round bale. So I agree, that I'm not paying for him to break equipment. I'm just trying to figure out where to go from here.

 

[oldnslo]

Agree rain may have settled the ground and exposed them. It sure is amazing how rocks grow but typically in an established hay field they stop growing.

 

[Hay Dude]

I had a similar situation where a buddy of mine planted beans and exposed a lot of rocks. He asked me to cut & bale the field the next fall and I nailed a few more rocks than I wanted to with my Pottinger discbine. The blades are cheap, but having to stop and change them is a PITA and slows the process down.
Rocks will continue to surface as rains wash the rocks clean of surface dirt.
If you keep picking them up, eventually you’ll clean the field up. It takes time after you plow up a field to get rid of them. You may have exposed many hundreds of them.

 

[dirttoys]

Rock hound maybe?

Best,

ed