Tips Cutting old Pasture Ground for hay

[ALauer]

I thought I would come on and talk about winter hay making today.

I personally live in Missouri and we have had a wonderful winter. Someday's recently it has been in the 50's! I decided to head out to an old pasture that hadn't been used in maybe 10 years. It got cut with a brush hog last spring, so nothing was bad in the field. I rode around in my four wheeler for like five minutes to check up on everything.

Tip 1: ALWAYS ride around in a truck or atv and check for any hazards or potential issues! This will save you one big headache later.

Anyway, then I brush hogged it with my batwing. I would use my hay cutter, but it's got a belt problem currently, and I'm not wasting time fixing it to then beat the crap out of it in trashy hay. The batwing requires about 90 horsepower at the PTO , so naturally I put the 160 PTO horsepower on it. I wanted the most power to run it. That insures no bogging.

Tip 2: Overkill is underrated, use a larger tractor than necessary because you never know how thick your hay really is.

Then I raked it with the Massey Ferguson 4235, Its got enough power to run the new rake. I made the rake wheels higher than normal, I didn't know how many rocks were in the field. Its a new H&S rake. I'm not risking it yet.

Tip 3: Run the rake high, you need clearance mostly over rocks. If I was you, I would go slower than normal, so you can keep an eye on the rake wheels.

Then I baled the hay, It was HEAVY hay. I ran slow and max throttle.

Tip 4: Run Slow with high throttle. You will end up messing up or wrapping if you go too fast.

Picking up the hay:

This is where I ran into problems. The road has been re worked since the field was last baled. I went to turn into the field, and I smacked the front of the trailer into a gate and ripped it off its hinges. I didn't care. The gate was crap, anyway. The trailer is fine. The real issue was getting the hay out of the field. We ended up just using my skid loader to pull the bales out of the field and drove them to the pickup outside the gate.

Overall, I will make money from it. It's a good investment for me. Thank you for reading this. PLEASE REPLY WITH YOUR OWN TIPS FOR THIS!!!!

 

[olPete]

I thought I would come on and talk about winter hay making today.

I personally live in Missouri and we have had a wonderful winter. Someday's recently it has been in the 50's! I decided to head out to an old pasture that hadn't been used in maybe 10 years. It got cut with a brush hog last spring, so nothing was bad in the field. I rode around in my four wheeler for like five minutes to check up on everything.

Tip 1: ALWAYS ride around in a truck or atv and check for any hazards or potential issues! This will save you one big headache later.

Anyway, then I brush hogged it with my batwing. I would use my hay cutter, but it's got a belt problem currently, and I'm not wasting time fixing it to then beat the crap out of it in trashy hay. The batwing requires about 90 horsepower at the PTO , so naturally I put the 160 PTO horsepower on it. I wanted the most power to run it. That insures no bogging.

Tip 2: Overkill is underrated, use a larger tractor than necessary because you never know how thick your hay really is.

Then I raked it with the Massey Ferguson 4235, Its got enough power to run the new rake. I made the rake wheels higher than normal, I didn't know how many rocks were in the field. Its a new H&S rake. I'm not risking it yet.

Tip 3: Run the rake high, you need clearance mostly over rocks. If I was you, I would go slower than normal, so you can keep an eye on the rake wheels.

Then I baled the hay, It was HEAVY hay. I ran slow and max throttle.

Tip 4: Run Slow with high throttle. You will end up messing up or wrapping if you go too fast.

Picking up the hay:

This is where I ran into problems. The road has been re worked since the field was last baled. I went to turn into the field, and I smacked the front of the trailer into a gate and ripped it off its hinges. I didn't care. The gate was crap, anyway. The trailer is fine. The real issue was getting the hay out of the field. We ended up just using my skid loader to pull the bales out of the field and drove them to the pickup outside the gate.

Overall, I will make money from it. It's a good investment for me. Thank you for reading this. PLEASE REPLY WITH YOUR OWN TIPS FOR THIS!!!!

Agree 100%. When I was contracting, the boss would always bale and rake and do everything at maximum speed. I would bale at 9mph and focus on not wasting any time.. he was always unblocking his baler as I trickled past. Slow and steady wins.
Same with a rake, much better to tease the grass into a swath than push it all in. Makes a big difference.
Totally agree.
Pick up all the debris out of your field while the grass is low, you will see it all, and driving on long grass makes for an untidy mowing job. Not sure how heavy heavy is to you, we made about 210 4' round bales off 25 acres here and that was just nice. Any heavier and the grass is losing too much quality really. This is ryegrass/clover pasture. We close up for ideally 35 days and then the pasture comes back greener faster.
One other tip, if possible, is to avoid making sharp turns with the rake as it makes the row harder to bale efficiently, and if it's steep, try to follow a contour so the baling tractor can easily tip the finished bales without them rolling. Or rake and then bale a flatter area first so the area can be used for placing the bales.
We make almost no winter hay in NZ.
You will notice, if you mow near the full moon, it wilts a lot faster than near the new moon. The stoma on the leaf stay open and dehydration happens faster.. the flipside is that wet weather often follows the full moon.
Pete

 

[Tx Jim]

ALauer
I'm curious what is the intended use of these dead Winter hay bales? Erosion control or compost maybe?

 

[olPete]

ALauer
I'm curious what is the intended use of these dead Winter hay bales? Erosion control or compost maybe?

I've been pondering that too, Jim. Bedding for barns was my guess.. time zones suck. I'll have to wait til morning for the answer!

 

[ALauer]

OlPete and Tx Jim,
I mostly use them to put on hay rides actually. I mostly wanted to get that stuff off the field without waste. I previously used those bales as compost at a local Mushroom Farm. I just don't need to haul hay to sell it for cheap. I usually keep them for Hayrides or light compost for my wifes garden. Nothing much honestly. Just wanted to not waste anything.

 

[powerscol]

Well that just lifted the fog from my mind. Normally you don't cut hay with a brush hog, and you did not mention drying, so I was thinking this thread was a joke. I hope your not keeping the hay in a barn stacked together - fire hazard in my mind.
Anything over about 20% can heat up and combust. What about mold, or do you use it quick enough? Moldy hay on a hay ride is bad too. Seen too many barn fires from folks rushing it. Almost had one myself when I let someone else bale for me - they did not check moisture content. I caught it just in time (smelled hot - put my hand into the stack and got singed) - had to scatter about 50 bales fast- 4 were smoking when I pull them from the center of the stack. I was lucky neighbor saw my frantic bale throwing and came running. Horses would not touch any of it - made a huge compost pile for the neighbor - got some back though - beautiful black gold for the garden. Did you square or round bale - just curious.

 

[ALauer]

Well that just lifted the fog from my mind. Normally you don't cut hay with a brush hog, and you did not mention drying, so I was thinking this thread was a joke. I hope your not keeping the hay in a barn stacked together - fire hazard in my mind.
Anything over about 20% can heat up and combust. What about mold, or do you use it quick enough? Moldy hay on a hay ride is bad too. Seen too many barn fires from folks rushing it. Almost had one myself when I let someone else bale for me - they did not check moisture content. I caught it just in time (smelled hot - put my hand into the stack and got singed) - had to scatter about 50 bales fast- 4 were smoking when I pull them from the center of the stack. I was lucky neighbor saw my frantic bale throwing and came running. Horses would not touch any of it - made a huge compost pile for the neighbor - got some back though - beautiful black gold for the garden. Did you square or round bale - just curious.

No this isnt a joke. Anyway. I never have stored hay inside. waste of space. I round bale

 

[olPete]

Do you make quite a bit of compost? Would you mind detailing how you make it? Also, did your hay have much seed left on, I'm assuming it has spent most of it by winter.

 

[powerscol]

If your asking me, I may not be the best source, I layer it about about 1 foot thick and add nitrogen fertilizer (a few hand fulls) water good, then the next layer tell you at the top. If I have horse poo handy I add a layer of that in too and skip the fertilizer. I try and keep it damp. at about 6 months I use my pallet forks to stir the pile. Takes about a year to all break down. Others have their tricks too. Google it, or take a look at Mother Earth news web page. Some add perforated pipe ever 2 lifts to get air in the pile. Neighbor piles it up and forgets it, but it takes longer, He does add his grass clippings in all the time though.

 

[olPete]

Thanks. It's a thing that we aim to do here. I have heaps (and I'm not joking) of crap out of our wintering barn. Some gloopy sloppy stuff that I had to scoop out mid winter, which has been piled up. Then there's the drier stuff, which is still in there, I put pigs in there to help aerate the top few inches and help it dry out without a crust on top. There's pumpkins growing in there now but I will clean it all out before next winter.. I was curious as to how you were going to incorporate the green stuff and hadn't thought of adding nitrogen to it. Do you use urea, or ammonium sulfate?
My plan going forward, is to plow a strip, use my feedout wagon to put waste silage and hay etc. down, and then put down layers of dry and wet dung, a little lime and more hay etc, all in a big windrow. I aim to construct a windrow turner one day when finances permit, but I can still roll/stir it with the FEL bucket that way.
Thanks for the info.