Any tips on getting hay to dry in 60-70 degree weather?

Jason S.

Well-known Member
Truthfully I'm figuring I can't get it to dry enough to square bale because of the dew and everything but I figure some of you would know better than me. I mow with a new holland haybine and I have it set to throw it in as wide of a swath as possible. The down side is I don't have a tedder and I rake with a bar rake,but I am thinking about switching to a wheel rake in the next couple of days. I have heard they will let air pass thru the windrows and help drying. Does it really help that much? Any other tips? Thanks for all your help.
 
we will rake it up with the wheel rake and then we will go back over the windrow with a 256 newholland roller bar rake and give it a flip with edge of the rake
 
Tedder is required... and a rotary rake helps. Propionic acid is probably about the only sure thing on it now tho, even with a tedder. A good strong breeze is your best hope at this point.

Rod
 
Dry hay season is over! You can ted the heck out of it and knock off all the leaves, if alfalfa. Time to round bale it and wrap it, but that's about it.
Loren, the Acg.
 
Find someone with a bale wrapper, makes perfect haylage every time!
Sam
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Years ago, I cut a nice little patch of alfalfa in early October. Beautiful weather, but I swear, I raked it every few days for weeks, finally giving up and baling it as green as the day I cut it. HEAVY bales. I was scared to put it in the barn, so I stacked it outside and covered it good. I figured it would mold, but it didn't - instead got kinda black and slimy. I started hauling it to a ditch and the cows mobbed it. Ended up feeding it all to them. Accidental silage, I called it.

Like others said - maybe you could aim for silage instead of hay.
 
Its not what you want to hear, but this is where a 1000 dollar, used, 2 basket tedder pays for itself.
 
We still have this and I am sure it will still work. Its in the drying shed under cover and dry. We also have 3 wagons that go with it. It makes damn good hay. Will even throw in the manual. Course it takes between 3 to 7 gallons of fuel an hour so it might cut into the profit a touch.
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Do the new wheel rakes work that much better? Any wheel rake Ive seen was worse for drying hay that a side delivery rake. I thought their main advantage was that they were faster. Just wondering because I have no experience with anything new. Around us we frequently cut the last cutting of alfalfa after a killing frost, sometimes into november, and are able to get it dry.
 
I don't know personally, I'm only going on what people have told me. They all say that a bar rake ropes the hay which is true but a wheel rake fluffs the hay into a windrow. That's what I'm told anyway.
 
need more info. What kind of hay, clear sunshine or rain forecast? High or low humidity, how soon are you tring to bale, etc, etc.
 
It's mainly Timothy and clover. It's supposed to rain tonight and tomorrow and then be between 65 and 70 and sunny for the next 3-4 days after that. I was hoping I could get it cured during that window but the dew is what will hurt the drying as well as the temperature.
 
Well, that good thing is it hasn't rained yet. The bad thing is it will rain. Whatever you do don't rake that hay until you have a drying day. Rent beg, borrow or steal a tedder. Don't waste your money on a wheel rake if you don't need it. WET hay ropes no matter what kind of rake. My experience says a wheel rake is even worse in wet hay. I will say my high capacity rake angles can be adjusted easier than the old bi folds but you still get to much wrapping in wet hay. Tedder, tedder, tedder. Most money saving machine I ever owned
 
If the bar rake is making ropes it's not set right. I think the newer wheel rakes can be adjusted like that also. If it's roping the hay the top needs to be tipped back. We always had ours set so it almost threw the hay up and really fluffed it.
 
(quoted from post at 15:47:18 10/16/13) We still have this and I am sure it will still work. Its in the drying shed under cover and dry. We also have 3 wagons that go with it. It makes damn good hay. Will even throw in the manual. Course it takes between 3 to 7 gallons of fuel an hour so it might cut into the profit a touch.
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my uncle had one of those back in the day. I believe I saw the remains of it there last year.
 

You don't say where you are, but here in the northeast we still dry hay in this weather. I mow it narrow as always so that I minimize driving on it and mashing it down into the wet ground. Then after a couple hours I will, as the others have said, ted it out. The different thing that we all do around here is rake into windrows in mid afternoon. Next day if it is close to dry we tip it over with the rake, then double later on. If it needs it it gets tedded again. Having it in the windrow overnight cuts down tremendously on the damage by the dew.
 
Well I am supposed to go pick up the wheel rake tomorrow. It is a Massey #29. According to what I looked up you can change the wheels on them to fluff hay, rake hay, or flip windrows. Would setting it to fluff the hay work? I know it isn't a tedder but I figured it would be better than nothing. Fluff it several times over those 3 or 4 days before raking it?
 
I"m in SE PA. I try to finish dry hay by the end of August, maybe go 2 weeks into Sept, but thats it. The dew, cool temps and short days make it a losing battle. Unless there is a drought (like this year) I avoid the agrivation.
 
In my experience the wheel rake is going to do nothing more than allow you to rake hay quicker than the bar rake. The hay is still placed into a tight windrow that has very little air movement through it.

Only way I can get late season hay to dry UP here is with the use of a tedder to get the hay spread around and a rotary style rake to put the hay into light fluffy windrows that the wind and sun can work their magic on.
 
The only rake that is really going to fluff things up is a rotary rake. They make a row nearly twice the size of a bar rake.
 
My experience is that it's normally easier to dry hay in October than it is in early May. I always use a tedder it right after I cut it and again if it gets a rain on it. I use a wheel rake and rake it early in the morning even if there is a heavy dew. I set my rake so the windrow is as wide as possible for the baler. It seems to me that it dries the dew quicker this way.
 
I wouldn't spend any money on a rake. Look for a tedder, rent one maybe. I'm in the same boat as you with dry hay. Your only options are tedding, wrapping or putting it into silage. If you want dry hay you simply need a tedder.
 
You don't say where you are located, that can make a difference. I've never used a wheel rake, but the fact that they're pretty near non-existent in this part of the country tells me something. I can tell you that the difference in the windrow a rotary rake makes over a bar rake with regards to drying is almost a miracle.

But it sure sounds like your next purchase should be a good tedder. Again, don't know where you are located, but around here no one makes dry hay without a tedder. Period.
 
I just finished 30 acres of hay in very similar weather, 45 at night, heavy dew and fog in the mornings, cut, left it sit for 2 days, raked it with my wheel rake into double windrows, went back and raked again with my Kuhn Rotary, next day once the dew finally dried about 1:30pm, fired up both balers and ran as quick as possible. If you can get 4 preferably 5 good days it can be done with a rotary, without it, i would never have gotten mine dry and in.
 
A wheel rake isn't going to give you much appreciable advantage over what you already have. But, you seem to have made up your mind regarding the wheel rake. If you have to pay "extra" for the wheel rake, don't waste your time. Using a wheel rake to fluff the hay is "just barely" better than doing nothing. Do as the others have told you and find a tedder. For some reason, you seem to think that the wheel rake will improve the drying of the hay "after" it is raked. It will not. You're going to go out there and rake the hay before it's ready and you'll end up with a "real" mess. You asked for our opinions and we gave them to you.

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink.
 
No I wasn"t intending on trying to fluff it after it was raked. I had intended on fluffing it while it was in a swath. I don"t rake hay until its dry.
 
I knew what you meant...trying to fluff it while it was still laid out wide. I've seen guys try to do this and barely had any results with a wheel rake.

What I tried to imply was that you'll probably have to pay "more" after the trade in of your rake on a wheel rake. Take that same money and purchase a tedder.....you'll be WAY ahead. I fought the urge to buy a tedder for years. After I got one, I absolutely could not believe the difference.

There is an art to running a tedder. One setting does not fit all, especially in alfalfa. With pure grass hay you can pretty much run as fast as you want and sling it as far as you want. With legumes, you have to speed up the tractor and slow down the rpm's of the tedder in order to not knock off the leaves.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do. Hey, let us know how the wheel rake works to fluff your hay if you go that route.
 
I went from a wheel rake to a bar rake. Wanted a rotary rake but was not an option within my budget. My wheel rake could be set up to fluff, but I never really used it like that because it only seemed to work in a light and wide windrow and it wasn't even very good. So I bought a tedder and used the wheel rake only for raking. I wasn't satisfied with it. Too much dirt in the haylage and too much ropemaking and big lumbs in heavy windrows. So I bought an old bar rake to replace it. It does a much better job. It has 2 PTO shafts. One for raking and another one with reversed rotation which makes it ted in stead of rake. I only tried to use it for tedding once but it seemed to work all right.
I don't know about your conditions. All I can say is if it was here I wouldn't think of making dry hay this late even with that temperature and a whole week without rain and a good tedder. I still have 7 acres to cut but it will all be wrapped.
 
I'm going to keep my bar rake. Its a very nice Ferguson D-EO-20 3 pt rake.The wheel rake is only $100.00 even if it doesn't work good to fluff hay I can at least pick up some speed raking grass hay. I won't have much invested in it anyway. Over the winter and into the spring I am going to keep a watch out for a tedder maybe at an auction or something.
 
(quoted from post at 10:21:37 10/17/13) No I wasn"t intending on trying to fluff it after it was raked. I had intended on fluffing it while it was in a swath. I don"t rake hay until its dry.

Jason, What I was trying to get across is that this late in the season you have to operate a little differently. Around here what we all do is to rake BEFORE it is fully dry, in order to reduce the exposure to the heavy dew. Then we turn it the next day.
 
(quoted from post at 01:04:40 10/18/13)
(quoted from post at 10:21:37 10/17/13) No I wasn"t intending on trying to fluff it after it was raked. I had intended on fluffing it while it was in a swath. I don"t rake hay until its dry.

Jason, What I was trying to get across is that this late in the season you have to operate a little differently. Around here what we all do is to rake BEFORE it is fully dry, in order to reduce the exposure to the heavy dew. Then we turn it the next day.

I had posted that in response to what Randall was saying. I understand what your saying. Does it work because it's in a windrow and most of it is off the ground so there isn't as much of it exposed to the dew?
 
(quoted from post at 17:09:54 10/17/13)
(quoted from post at 01:04:40 10/18/13)
(quoted from post at 10:21:37 10/17/13) No I wasn"t intending on trying to fluff it after it was raked. I had intended on fluffing it while it was in a swath. I don"t rake hay until its dry.

Jason, What I was trying to get across is that this late in the season you have to operate a little differently. Around here what we all do is to rake BEFORE it is fully dry, in order to reduce the exposure to the heavy dew. Then we turn it the next day.

I had posted that in response to what Randall was saying. I understand what your saying. Does it work because it's in a windrow and most of it is off the ground so there isn't as much of it exposed to the dew?

That's right- you got it.
 

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