First Cutting Is Done!

[goodhors]

A bit behind, but it is nice hay. Got more than expected, which balanced with having to sell 70+ wet bales to my friend with cattle. He was very happy to get them cheap, will feed them soon so no issues for his cattle. They were from the field edges and the wet spots, just would not dry even with tedding twice, laying out in hot, sunny weather.

The front field bales were HEAVY. That field is, where grass is very thick. Adjusted the baler for slightly smaller bales in the back field. That grass also is finer stemmed, dried faster, making for lighter bales. Thank goodness, didn’t want to kill off the kids putting bales in the stack with more heavy bales!!

Husband is still trying to figure if these bales are bigger than the old bales we used to buy. Somehow we are NOT going to get in 1400 bales, like many times in the past! We WILL have cover for the next cutting. Just not sure how we did it before! Laughing about it, the guys said all the bales are consistant sizes, weights, depending on which field it came out of. One of the great mysteries! Looks quite nice, silvery green and smells terrific. Wish they had a perfume that smelled like fresh cut hay!

We are beat, the sunshine really takes your energy being out in it. Hay has been sitting on wagons and the flatbed trailer under cover waiting for the weekend when kids could come. The equipment all worked pretty well. Some minor glitches, but not like last year. The accumulator and grapple were big time savers in loading wagons, not needing extra people to stack on wagons. Got to use my new long stem thermometer and moisture meter checking bales, which eases my mind when putting hay into the barn. The kids were real good about tossing aside any questionable bales for checking.

Just regular farm and horse things now until second cutting is ready. Could use some rain, the ground is really hard. Funny after all the May, early June rain, that now we need more again. Sure is nice to look at the stacked hay!

[NaturallyHappy]

Ditto the perfume!!!

[2DogsFarm]

We got that rain yesterday.
All day drizzle, that did not stop Driving Club from going to the local County Park.
They keep trails groomed for driving.
Shorter than usual drives, but good potluck lunch after. I rode with a friend & her Friesian.
I didn’t take my mini as my trailer was loaned to neighbor/hayguy who was getting pallets of bedding for us both.
Then late at night a heavy downpour with thunder & lightning.
Rain was badly needed, but…
Hayguy had just taken down my mini-field (~2ac) & raked. No rain in the forecast for the week, so hay should dry for baling.
Getting ready to head out:

[AwiUsdi]

@goodhors great recap, and thanks so much for sharing! What type of thermometer/moisture meter do you use? I googled “moisture meters for hay” and came up with a meter attached to a long probe, between $200-$300. In the long run, better than a fire. Spendy though in the short run. What do you use?

[goodhors]

The moisture meter is Agritronics. I got it used and the thermometer part does not work. But I got an instant read, 24 inch stick thermometer, so I am covered for hot bales. I had already purchased the thermometer before we located the moisture tester on FB Marketplace. Farmer out of the hay business getting rid of stuff. I jumped on it, called and zipped over to get it. They were very straight forward about that one reading not working, priced accordingly. Said maybe it could be fixed at the company. I tested the moisture reading on 2 bales I bought along, got different numbers, because they came from different fields. I was happy, paid, and brought it home. I believe it will make me very happy to use testing bales!

Now all I need is a hay bale sampler tool for getting hay tested. My “home method” works, just not as easy as the tool would be.

[candyappy]

@goodhors

Just regular farm and horse things now until second cutting is ready. Could use some rain, the ground is really hard. Funny after all the May, early June rain, that now we need more again. Sure is nice to look at the stacked hay!

I wish we were done! Due to a baler monitor issue our round baler was out of commission for 10 days.

Our neighbor came and baled one field we had down and we did squares as we waited for our monitor to get repaired. Have done 3 more fields since but have 3 really big ones to go.

Almost impossible to say but we need rain. 90’s and dry for 3 weeks is great for baling but not good for anything else!!

[goodhors]

Very basic older equipment we got at greatly reduced prices from a friend. We bought the whole “kit” of haybine, tedder, rake, baler, 3 hay wagons. We also got their “little tractor” for my friend who needed one with a loader. They had sold the farm, had 30 days to empty a house, boarding barn, sell farm equipment, so they were cleaned out. Anything left was the new owners. No monitor on our small square baler. Minor issues, string knot came undone when time for the new string to start. Probably 10 one-string bales on the 4-bale accumulator! Had to rethread the new string thru baler feed, needles, then rebale them. For some reason one string kept getting tighter than the other, bale explosion when the accumulator dropped them! Rebale those. Only choked the baler a couple times in the very thick hay, stop, pull the clot loose, start up again.

The previous owner was fanatic about maintaining his equipment, so we just keep greasing things, replace worn bolts, broken teeth, put new teeth on the cutter bar of mower. Usually we even have the needed parts in the “spare parts stuff” boxes he gave us. We really lucked out getting such well maintained equipment!! He has called yearly to see how the baling went, if the equipment is still behaving! I think he misses farm work in his retiremant. They board their one horse, don’t even have chores now!

We have a small acreage, and by adding the accumulator and bale grapple 2 years ago, we can manage everything except stacking in the barn by ourselves. May need to buy another hay wagon, we almost ran out of places to put bales on while waiting for the weekend. Husband is getting pretty good at stacking with the grapple. No bales fell off the wagons and fields are not that smooth!

We got a bit of rain and hoping for more. Hope you also get some after the hay is in.

[candyappy]

@goodhors

We got a bit of rain and hoping for more. Hope you also get some after the hay is in.

We got almost an inch Saturday morning. So welcome and we didn’t have anything down in hopes it did actually rain.

All our equipment is old. I am amazed at how well the guys keep it going. We will do everything in our power to replace our haybine with a disc mower this fall. It will be old too but they cut so much faster.

We are working on the hay for our customer now. So far so good!

[foggybok]

@goodhors

The moisture meter is Agritronics. I got it used and the thermometer part does not work. But I got an instant read, 24 inch stick thermometer, so I am covered for hot bales. I had already purchased the thermometer before we located the moisture tester on FB Marketplace. Farmer out of the hay business getting rid of stuff. I jumped on it, called and zipped over to get it. They were very straight forward about that one reading not working, priced accordingly. Said maybe it could be fixed at the company. I tested the moisture reading on 2 bales I bought along, got different numbers, because they came from different fields. I was happy, paid, and brought it home. I believe it will make me very happy to use testing bales!

Now all I need is a hay bale sampler tool for getting hay tested. My “home method” works, just not as easy as the tool would be.

I have two Agritronics. The first one died on me and I haven’t sent it back yet. I should… The second is the fancier version and has been working well. Great for peace of mind! The temp probe is slow though, I do the instant moisture read and if there are bales I need to watch for temp, I leave the probe in for a while and wander off. If I get any really hot ones, I can actually usually feel it by hand. A few years back, I had some get up to 150 (they were from the low point in the field that is in the shade most of the day). That was fun! My hay guy took them for his cattle.

This year I’m giving all the first cutting the the guy that cuts it for me. But now I feel bad because it’s been raining every other day since he cut… I don’t know if he’ll get anything usable from it. Once or twice is fine, but this is ridiculous!

[goodhors]

We like the haybine with the crushing roller, which helps speed drying time. I don’t think there is any crushing action on the disc cutters. As you say, they do cut very fast! We need our grasses to dry fast, get it up and under cover before a surprise rain shows up.

I don’t want so much dry hay down that we can’t get it baled and hauled in a day.

Saw a Forage talk with a man who developed a new baler that makes a different size bale to stack evenly on pallets to ship out on trucks… Sells by the ton, not the bale. He is a professional hay producer, does alfalfa in Ohio. His big selling point to horse folks is green color hay, so it has to dry quick, then get it out of the sun fast to stay green… The greener the color, the more he can charge for it and the horse folks love it! His new baler does 500+ bales an HOUR!! Everything is mechanized, baling, pickup, bundled into the barn. I think he said they bale about 25,000 small bales a year. Watching the video was amazing!

[candyappy]

Wow ! That is a lot of squares. It better be all mechanized

[Mosey_2003]

My farmer just did the second cutting last night. Man I love hay smell in the air…

[goodhors]

Second cutting grass is just getting started regrowing here. Been VERY dry since we finished first cutting. Did get some rain but it was not a lot and was gone fast. But any rain is certainly welcome!! Ha ha Hay and pasture are greening a bit again. Have been feeding some of the first cutting hay, not much grazing out there.

Going to be awhile before any chance of second cutting being ready. Wet weather has been going north and south of us. They even had some flooding! Wheat is getting harvested around the area. The straw is such a shiny gold!! They are leaving a lot of it lay to break down the shiny covering. Will bale later when it will be more absorbent, without the shine on stems.

[SusanO]

I don’t know what the local hay crop will be like. We are having very hot dry weather and except for sporadic thunderstorms there has been little to no rain. It rained here two days ago. For 5 minutes. My summer pasture is mostly bahia and nothing kills that stuff. It won’t die back enough for some much needed weight loss on both mares. People that depend on local warm season grass hay are going to be in a world of hurt come Fall. I think people north of me got two cuttings of orchard grass this Spring. It usually is dormant until the Fall anyway. I hope we get some much needed rain. I expect higher hay prices come Fall.