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Mark: As I said in the earlier thread, "RAIN" the biggest source of dust from hay I've seen in my many years. The closer the hay is to being cured, when the rain hits the worse the dust will be. I've seen hay that was still quite green when rain hit and very little dust resulted. You get it to the point it's hours away from baling, and you've got trouble. If you ted and rake it enough to dry well, you shatter a lot of the material to dust. Also, I've never seen rained on hay that didn't have the ocasional wet spot, and those wet spots are a source of mould. I repeat, the closer to baling when that rain hits, the worse the problem will be. Your hay contains moisture when mowed, but that moisture is uniform throughout. A windrow almost ready for baling absorbs moisture during rain, problem is it doesn't absorb moisture uniformly, thus it doesn't dry uniformly the second time. Many times I've had 6 outside edge of field windrows rained on. When the weather breaks, one mows the balance of the field. Almost 100% that new mowed hay will bale before the rained on hay. The problem here is most folks just never get that rained on hay 100% dry, thus they have dust from shattering and mould both. If you get it almost dry twice and rained on each time, you may as well call it compost, particularly if it contains legumes.
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