We are attempting to make 40 acres of clover hay. It is a thin first year stand. Our neighbor was going to mow it but decided he would rather have us bale it then spend the money to mow it. I'm not sure it was a good idea on his part. It has taken a week and a half to get it dry.
I've put the employee on the job. I've been stacking off and on for other neighbors and haven't had time to personally supervise all of the hay making.
Which brings up a little aside note. The balers/equipment which were made when AGCO was screwing up the Hesston name appear to be junk. If it has the Hesston/AGCO label with the shades of brown and gold (I think that is the color scheme) it is an awesome piece of hardware. If it says AGCO/Hesston or Massey/Hesston and is still brown it is crap. The new pink equipment seems to be ok. AGCO must have somehow screwed all the long term workers during the transition. My other neighbor has a 3-tie Massey/Hesston which has never baled a full summer in the 2 or 3 years he has owned it. But, his Hesston 3-tie is bullet-proof just like my 4690 Hesston. Absolutely the best baler ever made.
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| The Best Baler ever made baling grass hay at Muddy Valley |
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| The AGCO series of Hesston balers seem to be poor quality. This 7115 is kind of junk... This is my clover baling operation. |
But, I digress...
There is so much dew at night the hay won't fully cure. I cranked the conditioning rollers up to full tension. I set the windrow wide, (but the tires on my 2-135 are set close together so I set the windrow so we don't drive on it while mowing.)
I went over the field with a tedder that has bunch of ground driven wheels and you pull behind the pickup the next day after cutting. This lifted all the clover and grass off the ground.
Then I just left it alone for five days. I figure the top of the windrows are going to bleach from the dew and so I just don't mess with them. If you keep fluffing them up then more stems are beached. We had a couple days of heavy overcast and so we took advantage of the last day to double rake it all.
With just a little exposure to the air the light windrows immediately dropped to 12 percent. We checked for stem moisture, meaning we look closely at the joints on the plant stem. If you can peel back the stem with your thumbnail or if you can find moisture in the join then the plant is not cured.
When you have use a moisture tester in hot weather you have to also think ahead. If it is 3 p.m. and 85 degrees and the grass hay is 14 percent moisture and it has only been down a two days you can bet it is going back up to 20 percent when it is in the bale. If you look closely you will find green in the joints.
With the clover hay you need to save the leaves. If you bale late in the afternoon you may get the desired moisture but all the leaves will turn to powder and then you may also have wet hay if it is not cured. It is really kind of a pain in the arse.
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| 12.9 percent is probably a little low for Clover. I want to keep the leaves on. You can bale alfalfa up to 20 percent but Clover stems tend to retain moisture. Most of the leaves were still on the bale but the bale was not too heavy so I think it will be good hay. |
We ended up skipping the heavy sections and baling all the light windrows. We will rake the heavy windrows this morning after the dew is off and then try to bale in the window between too wet and knocking all the leaves off. I am not coming back at night to bale again after the moisture comes back up.
We made 320 bales and have five acres left. Not a real good yield for 40 acres. I'm hauling the stack home with the stacker about five miles so it goes slow. Of course I broke one of the tables that lift the bales so I welded on that till 10:30 last night. Perhaps I'll post a photo. I suppose some folks would find it pretty interesting how the automatic bale stacker works.
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ReplyDeleteHandy moisture tester. Probably a little more accurate than mine. Just grabbing a handful of the hay and taking my best guess whether or not it is dry enough to pack into a bale and not mold.
ReplyDeleteThere is no crop that owns your life and time like hay. Livestock just as bad and year round. When my brother and I used to put up small squares of alfalfa we'd joke that the heavy wet ones we set aside not to put in the barn had a pig in them. I was never quite clever enough to actually catch a pig with the MM 602 and JD 24T rig. You'd need a fast tractor with tricycle gear and a really low center of gravity, a baler pickup with lateral motion and really quick hydraulic response. NASA grade vacuum capability would help. There's probably a prototype of a baler pickup that would work somewhere on Uncle John's Crazy Town. But then there would be all the storage and marketing issues. Spam's been done.
ReplyDelete