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Michael: I've tried numerous ways in making hay. I can tell you the demo tedder only stayed around about two days. Those damn things will thrash the leaves off grass almost as quick as alfalfa. The very best system I encountered, was the 9' haybine and put in right into 3' windrows. You need loads of tractor clearence and wheel tread spacing so your tractor is on the hay little as possible. Wind and breezes dry hay far faster and more effectively than sun alone. Tractor clearence is of the utmost as you want those windrows to stay high and not flatened out by a drawbar and rear housing. In fact if I were doing this again, the one machine on my farm that would be self propelled in the mower conditioner. They have much better ability of not disturbing those windrows than tractor pulled machines. I got started doing this after I started putting up haylage. I started encountering problems of material getting too dry for haylage. I found if I rolled those windrows 180 degrees, within 3 hours I was baling them. To me the least number of times you handle that hay mechanically the more leaves you save, doesn't matter grass or legume. I worked a climate where we always had 50%+ humidity. Grass and legume growth in that area was very fast, very rarely were we never cutting less than 4 ton per acre. With any kind of weather it was mow it down one day, turn it next morning and bale it that afternoon. Bear in mind I was using a barn hay dryer. If by chance hay got rained on, I had the silo option.
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