Re: Rain and making hay

Posted by modirt on June 23, 2019 at 07:59:42 from (199.187.163.74):

In Reply to: Rain and making hay posted by muleman51 on June 22, 2019 at 07:49:53:

As the old saying goes........"you gotta make hay when the sun shines".

There really isn't any other time do do it. Sometimes nature just throws up these roadblocks and you are forced to deal with it. At this point, you might as well wait it out for good dry weather. It will be what it will be. It turns out most of the folks who buy from me are not sophisticated enough to know the difference between really good hay and crapola. If it's cheap, they will buy it.

We have had exactly two short weather windows suitable for making hay all spring. I didn't have much to do, so managed to take advantage of both to get my hay up and dry.

Having said that, during the first narrow window, a heavy crop of mixed grass hay was cut early, and even despite being run through a conditioner and good drying weather, it was a real ordeal to get it dried down, baled and in the barn in time. Within 24 hours, we got about 2 inches of rain....and it stayed wet for 3 more weeks. And about a week or so later, I found a few bales in that group that had some "green clumps" in them that never did dry out and those bales had already gone moldy and had to be kicked out. Contributing to the issue was still wet soils under the hay......so even though the stuff on top exposed to the sun and wind was dry, stuff deep down below was still as green and wet as when I cut it the day before.

So after that ordeal, I went on a hunt for a tedder and found a good used one. That made all the difference in the world. Same type hay as before, but hit it with the tedder about 8 AM day after it was cut......about the time the dew was lifting......and by noon the same day, hay was bone dry and ready to bale. Moisture meter had it at around 13% in the bale. So instead of fighting it for 3 days, it was dry and in the barn at the end of day 2. Better product and shorter harvest window.

I'd never run a tedder.....saw one used once, but thought it was a joke and totally unecessary. It's not. Under right conditions, a tedder can be a savior.

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