Leroy

Well-known Member
Been reading your hay making questions and I have some question for you. What type of hay do you raise, grass or legumes? What is your aim for state date? How many cuttings do you anticipate getting? How far apart do you anticipate making the cuttings? Total acreage now or later? In my area it is alfalfa and start date is May 15 and every 30 days following so if your first baled you do not get unloaded at the start you have only less than 30 days to unload until you need those wagons for the next cutting. And if it takes you 3 weeks to get all of the one cutting done it does not give you much time to get ready for the next. Just have no idea of timing in Va as to Ohio where I am. If lucky and weather works you should get first cutting Ma5, second June 15, third July 15, fourth August 15, fifth September 15 and depending on year a sixth cutting on Oct 15. 4 cuttings is more like it tho with some years only able to do 3 cuttings. And is your ground a sandy type that after an inch of rain you do not have any standing water after an hour? Or like mine after that inch you have water standing for 2 days? And would you have a market for the chaff that is left on the wagon or at the bottom end of the elevator? That is very good to put in hog or chicken feed.
 
Bill, couple more questions. How many acres do you plan on cutting at a time? And how far apart do you cut, once a week or every day? Makes a big difference if you are cutting twice a week for 3 months or if you are making one cutting a year and can make the end of that cutting 3 months after starting it. And somebody that is from irigated ground that can stack out uncovered on the ground or like me if I would try to stack on pallets in a pole barn I would have water setting 2" deeper than thickness of pallets. So the ones that think the baskets are the way to go probably cannot count on having a heavy rain on the bales as soon as they are dumped As if I was trying to do that would happen and everything would be completely soaked. The answers to these questions could completely change the answers you are getting to your questions.
 
We make Timothy hay, as well as some Teff grass hay - all of it to be sold to the horse market. One cut for the Timothy per year. If we could squeeze in a second cut, I might try it. We raise two different varieties of Timothy, Clair and Climax as they come in several weeks apart and we don't have to have all of our Timothy on the ground at the same time. The Teff will be cut about every 30 days - best we could do is 3 cuttings. Teff is our temporary hay while we reclaim an old field, replaced by Timothy seeding in the fall.

Our soil is sandy/loamy, but filled with potato to basketball sized rocks! Water doesn't stand in our fields at all, but one very small field is in a flood plain and some of it can go under water.

Hadn't really thought about gathering and selling chaff, we don't stack in a loft, I've got an elevator that needs a rebuild and is on the round-2-it list. We also have no livestock. Use to be cattle, a few hogs, chickens and a bunch of loud ginnys (sp?). When I was a boy, I had a 3 speed bicycle. There is a long lane, straight, going down into the farm with a tad down slope to it. Every once in a while, those ginnys would be assembled half way down that lane - in it. I would pedal that bicycle as fast as I could and run through/scatter those ginnys like a jet fighter! They really got loud when I'd do that - LOL!

Acreage - this year, we're doing somewhere around 25-28 acres. We have the potential to do at least 50, probably more. Not sure where I want to top out. We cut 5 to 10 acres at a time. It's not often we have weather that allows for continuous cuttings, day in/out. Generally get a cut in the weather window and wait for another one a few days or weeks later.

We stack on pallets - one thing I'm considering is asphalt flooring. From what I can glean, one can stack hay directly on asphalt with no mildew or mold as happens with concrete. This would eliminate pallets and make for an easy clean-up when the bales are gone.

I have a day job. The goal is to whittle down our hay to as little time and labor as possible. We'd like a 9ft cut and rake, bale onto wagons and park them for unload in a shelter for another day. Our long pole in the tent has been unloading wagons as we bale. If we can postpone that for another day, we could bale much more hay. Our goal is to have enough wagons and drive-in shelter space to do 1,000 bales in a day if pressed. Recently I have been thinking (a few years from now) of refitting our wagons with rower racks and adding a pan kicker to the JD348. This would enable one person to make hay, again, parking the wagons in shelters for unloading another day.

Bill
 
Bill some things to think about. Timothy hay can be pushed with a good shot of fertilizer early in the spring. Then cut as soon as seed head start. Then another shot of nitrogen and you can easily get a second cutting. We did for years and I am further north than you are. Kicker wagons and selling horse hay do not mix well. Crooked and bent bales do not stack well to haul. Think about an accumulator system and handling the bales with a loader/skid steer. I sold horse hay for over 15 years and most years we put up over 40K. We started out with ten 20 foot flat bed wagons. The last 3-4 years I used them with a Hoelscher Bale accumulator. It worked well. Lot of the hay was never touched by hand. It was loaded in the field, stacked in a shed, and reloaded on a truck/trailer out bound, all with a loader.

I tried the drag type bale accumulators and did not like them. I had trouble with broken strings and dirty hay. There are several brands of accumulators around today. You can find them used too.

For a floor to story hay on I found that round 2 inch clean river rock works well. Lay plastic down and 3-4 inches of the rock down. The plastic keeps moisture out and the coarse rock allows some air movement. Also rejected/used hog/cattle floor concrete slats work great too.
Bale Accumulator from Hoelscher Inc
 
I sell 90% of my hay to horse people, and as JD Seller says, you don't want to leave them on a wagon too long - a day or so isn't bad, but more than that and they do get a little out of shape.
Around here (Central NY), we plant mostly Brome grass for horse hay, because it stays green for so long - if you get it in a little late it still looks good. My buddy tried some tall fescue last year, and that worked well also.
Pete
 
Interested in your comment about hitting grass hay with a second shot of nitrogen after the first cutting.
Do you spread as soon as the hay is off, or wait a few weeks?
 
We have gotten a second cut of timothy a few times over the years, We always had it mixed with red clover and if you cyt it when the red was ready then in the second cut was nice timothy. Usually timothy is left to get too ripe for first cut to be able to make a second cut. Have not made hay for years as the dairy heard left in Nov. of 1980 But I still remember things and see how things work for the neighbors. We also had hogs at that time and they sold what was called alfalfa meal at the feed store as a feed supliment for the hogs and chickens. We had a plant about 30 mile away that made that alfalfa meal and to see the weediest over ripe stuff they took in and blended it with good hay to get the proten levels they wanted Dad decided enough was enough. That chaff that we would kick off the wagon back into the field before was mostly leaves where the food value is. When gotten to thinking about it realized that had bore feed value in that the best of the hat that went into that afalfa meal we bought our own hammer mill to grind the chaff. When we went to get hog feed ground (we had no mixer and staking the mill down and belting up the tractor every week was too much) we would just take how ever many burlap feed sacks of that ground chaff to the mill and they would just dump them into the mixer with the rest of the feed (we always had oats in the feed mix, not like only the corn nowdays). If the hogs were on pasture but ours were not the pasture was usually timothy and the hogs would eat it in the pasture. I have no idea hoy your timothy would test or if there would be any small time hog raiser around that would be interested in it. The hogs might have taken a bit longer to get to market with the corn, oats hay ration but they were healthier than the hogs raised in confignment today. Now I am 73 getting close to the downhill slide to 74 and in poor health and never had any children and about 2 years since I lost my wife. I have never seen any of those acumulaters around this part But in our buildings they would have done no good. I am located midway between Dayton and Toledo Ohio. Not much livestalk left in this area but years ago everybody had some. That hay for the nutriants is much cheaper and better for the animals that can use it than the commercial vitimans that the make and put in the feed now but they are easier to use so that is what counts now. The one mow in the barn was 2' off the ground and wood and there was water standing underneeth that floor about all the time and we never cleaned out that bottom layer of hay because it was always spoiled. Our first baler was a new New Holland engine driven 66 and later got the used McCormick 46 with the thrower after I got overcome with heat in the mow and Grandpa and 16 year old step cousin got overcome while loading on the wagon all in one year. That is why I am always saying have it so you do not have to load bales by hand in hottest part of day or unload in even hotter mow. That was in the late 70's and to this day I can feel it when I am about to get overheated and have to use extra salt that the doctors now say do not use yet that is what when I got sick I had to drink salt water because I had sweated out too much salt. And that is why I am urgen you to get away from handling those bales loading in the field like I am. No fun having the dry heaves for 6+ hours straight.
 
It would be as soon as possible. Back when we were making hay nobody thought you should put fertilizer on hay.
 
(quoted from post at 11:04:51 02/14/17) Interested in your comment about hitting grass hay with a second shot of nitrogen after the first cutting.
Do you spread as soon as the hay is off, or wait a few weeks?
HAYhayhay: We usually hit it right after we are done baling. IF it looks like rain soon we use Urea. If rains are unlikely for a while then we use AMS. If your local supplier has any treated Blue urea it works good to if rains maybe longer off.
 

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