Third cutting hay

Jim Wolf · Aug 25, 2018

Small operation - making hay on 10 acres. I am thinking I might gain by cutting second and third cutting with a mower deck on a utility tractor. I can get a closer cut than with other equipment. I would then do the process as usual but set the tension high on the baler. My question is whether bales will hold together with such short pieces of grass.

old · Aug 25, 2018

Waste of time and $$ trying that it does not work well if at all. You might get by if you remove the sides of the mower so the grass flies out from under it but that in turn also causes a big mess of things because you end up running over it again and cutting it up more. I use a sickle bar mower and cut as low as I would with any other type of mower.

BY the way your lucky to get a 2nd and 3rd cutting. Where I am I'll be lucky to get a 2nd cutting due to being so dry here

Texasmark1 · Aug 25, 2018

Waste of time trying to roll that. Around the 4th of July I tried to recover something called the second cutting of sorghum-sudan. I cut it in the normal fashion with a drum hay cutter. What wound up rolled and tied was about half of normal for the amount of hay that went into the roller to be rolled. The rest wound up on the ground in little bitty pieces.......aka too short, running around 1' on average.

I raked the third cutting today, which was 1-3' thanks to some rain, but already in the boot. Will get something, not much, but something out of this. At least half of it shouldn't fall on the ground like before.

Third cutting hay

Jim Wolf

Member

old

Well-known Member

Texasmark1

Well-known Member

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