Who’s cutting hay?

[Hay Dude]

Idaho is stunning. So is Wyoming, Utah and Nevada. I would live out there if I had another chance. I’d own a hay farm and shoot guns off my porch. Raise my family under the blue skies. Pure Heaven out there boys.

 

[mo1]

Hay is baled and most is sold/gone already. 110 bucks a bale was apparently cheap, I told that to the guy who bought 50 bales and I think he couldn't wait to get me paid fearing I'd reconsider and raise the price. He buys from me every year so I don't mind giving him a break.
Only got 75 bales, better than last year but I really thought I'd get about 100.

Hay around here has been going fast as well, I sold all of the extra round bales and some small squares (didn't really intend to sell any but had extra) within a week of making them just by word of mouth and people stopping by to ask. I should get a second cutting and sell all of that too unless it rains a bunch as everybody is worried about getting enough hay this year.

 

[eagle628]

Neighbor's square baler went down--literally, the wheel fell off. Time for me to come in for some thrilling heroics and save the day with our round baler.

We're getting wicked dry too. There's some rain forecasted for this week, but if doesn't come through second/third cut is going to be in serious trouble. I'm going to start supplementing my own cows on pasture with bales by the end of the week.

 

[Hay Dude]

Nice work! You should post more Eagle628!

Dry in VT huh? Nothing but rain here in PA/DE. Can’t string 3 dry days together since April.

 

[sea2summit]

Dry in VT huh? Nothing but rain here in PA/DE. Can’t string 3 dry days together since April.

This in GA as well^

 

[Hay Dude]

Its so dark outside, the lights are on.
Bombs away…. another inch of rain!

 

[ptsg]

Its so dark outside, the lights are on.
Bombs away…. another inch of rain!

Send some of that rain here!! We need it really bad!

 

[goeduck]

Forgive me since I know very little about Idaho, but I'm assuming rainfall is minimal.

Most of the west coast dries up for the summer and it becomes almost a drought (some places it is very much a drought, ie CA)

 

[redman135]

I am seeing all hay being made. Does nobody make wrapped baled silage in US?
I have seen video's of bulk/bunker silage, but not wrapped baled silage.
I am in New Zealand, Wakato/king Country (3rd wettest part of NZ) and we make almost all silage as making hay is to iffy.

 

[LittleBittyBigJohn]

This is probably a silly question... Back when I was a kid I always saw sickle hay cutters that laid the grass down flat and spread out. Those guys didn't have to use a tedder. Now I'm seeing mowers that purposefully windrow the cut grass. Maybe it's a regional thing? Why would you want the grass in rows to have to spread back out then rake back up?

 

[mo1]

This is probably a silly question... Back when I was a kid I always saw sickle hay cutters that laid the grass down flat and spread out. Those guys didn't have to use a tedder. Now I'm seeing mowers that purposefully windrow the cut grass. Maybe it's a regional thing? Why would you want the grass in rows to have to spread back out then rake back up?

Sickle mowers leave the grass nice and even in the swath because they just snip the plants' stalks and they fall over the sicklebar when it passes. Any kind of rotary mower has some propensity to propel what it has cut in a direction tangential to the rotation of the cutterhead, such as how your lawnmower blades turn clockwise as viewed from above and shoot grass out of the right side of your mower deck. Rotary mowers such as disc and drum mowers are a lot faster than sickles and this is why they are so widely used today, the narrower windrows are a consequence of the cutter design, particularly with the drum mowers. You can also intentionally make narrow windrows with most drawn hay cutters by adjusting the width of the swath doors in the back. We run ours pretty much wide open and everybody else here does the same as the wider swaths dry better than a narrow windrow.

I can think of one reason somebody would intentionally make a narrower windrow right out of their cutter and then ted it. If they know that due to crop and drying conditions that they have to ted anyway and want to make the windrows narrow enough they don't have to drive over them when tedding, and do the tedding pretty shortly after cutting so they don't lose much drying time of having the swath spread wider to begin with.

 

[Hay Dude]

This is probably a silly question... Back when I was a kid I always saw sickle hay cutters that laid the grass down flat and spread out. Those guys didn't have to use a tedder. Now I'm seeing mowers that purposefully windrow the cut grass. Maybe it's a regional thing? Why would you want the grass in rows to have to spread back out then rake back up?

I can adjust the width of my windrows on my disc mower from 3’ to over 8’. The older sickle mowers didn’t have roll conditioning or flail conditioning like the more recent haybine s and disc mowers (most) do.
The mowers with conditioning tend to gather the crop, condition it, then throw it out into the adjustable chutes.
Narrower windrows can also be a strategy for allowing the ground between the rows to dry out.

 

[eagle628]

Took a while, but found the first hillside field to bale this year. Only sent one into the trees though.

 

[Hay Dude]

View attachment 755244
Took a while, but found the first hillside field to bale this year. Only sent one into the trees though.

Eagle628 I finally found someone with dirtier glass than me!

 

[Hay Dude]

While haying I spotted this 10 pointer.
Might have to skewer him this fall.

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

He lives on "the other side of the tracks".....

 

[goeduck]

Eagle628 I finally found someone with dirtier glass than me!

I thought it was a swarm of dragoneggs.... err dragonflies.

 

[goeduck]

While haying I spotted this 10 pointer.
Might have to skewer him this fall.

View attachment 755247

5 point out West

We do it this way so we don't run out of fingers counting the old guys.

 

[eagle628]

Chopping some third cut--it's hay adjacent anyway. Truck duty in the morning.

Pack tractor later on.

 

[sea2summit]

Chopping some third cut--it's hay adjacent anyway. Truck duty in the morning.
View attachment 756409

Pack tractor later on.

View attachment 756410

Looks like the tractor operator missed a little with the loader…probably deliberately