Got started chopping after lunch

Bruce from Can. · Jun 8, 2017

Hay was still a bit wet at first, but started in any how. Next thing I new , we had to stop for milking. Going to head out again now , and cut till dark. Oh well , it's a start. Bruce

RayP(MI) · Jun 8, 2017

Hay was dry enough to bale at about 4:30 this afternoon. Just got in at 8:45 after an extended baling session and loading it all by hand. Going to have to work on that knotter again. Wasn't pretty. Did I say I don't like rebales? At least hay is on the wagon and inside a nice dry polebarn. Was watching a big old cloud with rainshafts while loading, but it finally drifted off to the south.

showcrop · Jun 8, 2017

I am going to be making actual dry hay in a few days if the forecast holds. It is going to be tough because the ground is so wet, and I don't think that I have ever seen the hay so tall and thick.

tomstractorsandtoys · Jun 8, 2017

We chopped both rye and first crop alfalfa last week. We even dry baled some that would not fit in the silo. We finished all the grass hay today for about 130 4x4 round bales. Tom

K Effective · Jun 8, 2017

We knocked out 467 idiot cubes tonight from the five acres I mowed Monday. I watched those same rain clouds pass just north of us, between you and me, RayP(MI). we loaded one wagon in the barn, the other two are inside the pole barn.

Has anybody ever experimented with chopping dry hay, then just blowing into the mow to be fed loose? A coworker told of his uncles chopping straw and then blowing it into the mow for bedding during the winter. I wondered if that would work with loose, dry hay. I could harvest first cutting all by myself when the boys move along. I just hate giving up the hay fed from the mow all winter long, no snow or loader to worry about...

ajl · Jun 8, 2017

Chopping dry hay and straw used to be quite common 40 to 50 yrs ago as both our neighbors did it when I was growing up in southern Ontario.
Hay had to be consistently dry as fire risk was higher than baled and was quite dusty. Would take a lot of work to fork that material where
it had to go once it was in the mow.

Bruce from Can. · Jun 9, 2017

You could certainly chop and blow dry hay into a mow , I know fellas that chop and blow all of the straw
they need for a 100 cow tie stall barn .
I would think that you would want to increase the chop length to 4-6 inches . This could be achieved by
removing some of the knives from the chopper , and or increasing the speed of the feed rolls.
While I have no idea of how your set up works , Not so sure that I would want to go this route . I store
large round bales of dry hay in the upstairs of our barns . You can unroll the bales upstairs and fork the
loose hay down ,or make a hole in the floor large enough to just drop the bale down stairs. I stack big
round bales three high upstairs with my skid steer. Bruce

K Effective · Jun 9, 2017

Yes, transport of the loose hay once in the mow seems like the real downfall of this idea. And here I kept the old hay saw for all those years...

Bruce- when you say you stack them three high and move them with your skid steer- how robust is the loft of your barn? Mine was built 1950, 8 inch sidewall studs, 2X12 floor joists on 24 inch centers supported by steel I beams on 12 foot centers. Tongue and groove three-quarter flooring. I would expect any wheeled vehicle to punch through the floor if it picked up a 1000 pound round bale in the loft. Plus, I would have to come up with a way to get said vehicle up into the loft, no bank around.

Bruce from Can. · Jun 9, 2017

I have three different barns that I drive into . all three are built into a hill side with a stable under
the hay mow . Two of the old barns were built in the old post and beam style from one hundred years ago. the
other barn was built in 2000. The new barn has 2 inch floor joist on edge on 12 inch centers , with 1/2 inch
plywood , and that is covered with two inch plank. I have driven a 10,000 lb tractor in the upstairs on the
new barn .
Not so brave with the old barns . If the floor has only 1 inch boards , I would cove them with 2 inch
plank , you can leave a gap between the plank of about 2 inches , so a skid steer tire will always be on two
planks at any one time . I have had a dry rotted floor board break out under me before in one of the old
bans , wakes you up. That was when I started putting down plank , lol.
if you can't drive into the upstairs of your barn , I don't see how you could do this either.

Bruce from Can. · Jun 9, 2017

Two pictures of barns, first picture is of skid steer in
the upstairs of my newest barn stacking bales.
Picture two shows his the ground is level with the
floor of the hay mow, I push my forage wagons in
onto the dry floor for storage, milk cows are down
stairs, and stable floor walks out on the level on the
other side of the barn. Bruce

coonie minnie · Jun 9, 2017

It used to be done... but went out of favor quickly. It was easier to get the barn on fire than with bales.

BAck in the day, my neighborhood had "hay driers"- large ducts of wood built into hay barns. The hay was elevated and dumped over the duct, and then had to be leveled by hand. Then you turned on the blower (in
the example across the street, a 15 hp squirell cage fan) and let it dry. I'm told you could put the hay in 5 or 10 points wetter that way, but it took a lot of management. People seemed to figure out
quickly if you had a chopper, you might as well use the silo! The system across the road from me functioned until the long time tenant sold out in 2008. We rented the farm after that, and the landlord had us
remove the duct so we could actually use the hay mow for something else. It was probably the last one of those functioning most anywhere!

Also, if you like hay with no leaves, you'll like chopping dry hay.

It seems every last one will blow away!

allcolorpuller · Jun 9, 2017

Have to be careful, place I worked at had a stone go up the blower pipe and caught the barn on fire.

JMS/.MN · Jun 9, 2017

Had a distant neighbor that chopped dry hay into his barn...was extremely dusty to feed. But for maybe 25 years we did chop all barley straw, blowing it into a gothic haymow. Cut two holes in the rafter overhang, shove a short blower pipe up between two rafters, and let it fly! Had several doors in the haymow floor to drop bedding down into a wheeled cart. Worked very well. Straw had to be dry, and I set the feed rolls (Gehl CB 600) much faster.

hd6gtom · Jun 9, 2017

Looks like the fellows got a huge first cutting here too. Need to figure out how to ship it to North and South Dakota where they are liquidating herds. I was gonna reseed some but I've got so much hay left over from last year I left the seed in the bag and am pasturing the old off till fall.

caterpillar guy · Jun 10, 2017

Our old barn we put round bales in with a telehandler. We get them up to the hip across the mow floor. Put them in a 60x50 freestall barn on the mow floor also. Those are set in the same way.
We used to blow loose hay in the barn on both ends with straw in the middle. Have an old McKee set up from McKee bros. In Elmira Canada. The wagon is 26 feet long and about 8 foot square. 1 man could haul hay all day long alone with no help and do probably about equivalent to 1000 bales per day. We used loose hay from the early 60's till the late mid 80's When round balers came out we switched most of it over to that. Also put up 3 8x150 bags of hay chopped for haylage back during the 80's.

Got started chopping after lunch

Bruce from Can.

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RayP(MI)

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showcrop

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tomstractorsandtoys

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K Effective

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ajl

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Bruce from Can.

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K Effective

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Bruce from Can.

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Bruce from Can.

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coonie minnie

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allcolorpuller

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caterpillar guy

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