Thank you JasG. Good advise. I seem to grow a good crop of rocks each year. I could spend weeks with my Bobcat and a rock bucket picking rocks. I heard that a rotary rake works very well but does bring in more stones ( if present) and chaff when raking. Any truth to that?
We have a lot of rocks also, stones, and other stuff plus a layer of shale that every time we plow brings up stuff. As far as being a problem we loaned ours to a guy up the road who chops 100% of his hay and he liked it so much he bought one. Choppers and stones do not get a long so I would say if set up correct it should not.
Also if the wind is blowing, we have raked material before it was ready (earlier than we would with a rollbar rake) if it's not real heavy. It the same field the stuff raked cured faster than the stuff left alone tedded out. With 2nd cutting he liked to rake 1 day early in single rows, then double them right before baling.
He has a roll bar rake, we use it once a year just to use it, the grease it and put it away. He only keeps it around in case the rotary breaks.
Bottom line is he feels in the last 10 years he has gotten a lot of hay in with the rotary that with a rollbar would not have cured before rain came. Picking up at least 1/2 a day sometimes a full day.
You could tedd again, but then you end up with leaf loss and with day hay that has some green spots here and there. We have found tedding at that point the green stays on the bottom. With the rotary it's up in the wind row which is fluffy and seems to cure faster.
I think another reason is getting back to the ground. If the ground is damp at all it slows the curing down. Raking it up allows the ground to dry, yet with the fluffy wind rows the hay still cures.
