OT - Tons of Hay, Back in the Day...

Bill VA · Sep 21, 2015

In our little hay making effort, we are doing about 12-13 acres. Probably add 7 more for a spring planting of teff grass with OG or Timothy drilled in next fall. Our current fields we reclaimed from the weeds (the 12-13 acres) over the past few months, based on soil samples, has had lime, fertilizer - killed down via roundup and drilled with timothy hay.

The goal is quality hay and plenty of it.

But what about back in the 50's/early 60's - square balers were more common, access and I gather affordable tractors and equipment displaced older equipment, I suppose by 1950, farming with a horse was pretty much a thing of the past on the family farm. Hay making equipment like my 7 ft MF sickle mower, 7 ft JD rake, MF50 and older tractors like an 8N or Farmall, etc., and balers like the JD 14T or my NH68 - ALL by today's standards were low capacity farming machinery. Farms were also smaller too than by today's BTO's.

What kind of tons per acre of hay would a farmer have shot for back in the day? Just enough to feed the livestock or surplus to sell? 1 ton, 2, 3 - 6 tons per acre? What was considered a high yield back in the early 50's/early 60's?

Just curious.

Thanks!
Bill

IaGary · Sep 21, 2015

Back in the 60's we would bale 5000 to 7500 50+ pound bales a year off of 40 acres. We have lighter soils so rain had a lot of influence on the yield. Using those numbers we had 4 to 5 ton per acre.

We only hayed a field for 2 to 4 years before it was rotated with corn and other crops. Each field was in hay about 3 years out of 6.

We always had a alfalfa, clover, orchard grass and timothy mix.

Gary

Bill(Wis) · Sep 21, 2015

By the 1950s we had graduated up to a New Holland 77 Hayliner which was the Cadillac of hay balers. Those bales were the old squares that were larger than the kicker squares that followed. That baler would pump out 10 bales per minute, just like the New Holland ads said. Problem would be if you were pushing bales up onto an attached wagon, the guy(s) on the wagon would have trouble standing up unless the field was extremely smooth. By free dropping you could bale 10 bales a minute all day long. I remember one year, I think it was 1954, we sold 32 tons of first cutting alfalfa off from a ten acre field. Then, we had the second cutting to feed. Much higher in protein than the first cutting. We only got 2 cuttings as far north as we are due to lack of good drying weather in early June. That was before crimpers and haybines came along. Not very much hay was put in the silo then, either. We also raised red clover for hay and harvested seed from the second cutting as there was a fair amount of demand for red clover seed. Red clover was a good deal more winter hardy than alfalfa. All total, we would put up about 200 tons of hay. Plus 2000 bushels of oats and 2 14x40 silos of corn silage. Somewhere between 2/12 to 3 tons per acre would be considered an average hay yield on our farm.

Ultradog MN · Sep 21, 2015

Just curious,
How did you harvest the clover seed?

Bill(Wis) · Sep 21, 2015

Cut it with a hay mower. Raked it into windrows and picked up with a hay loader onto a hay wagon and took it to a clover huller which was the same basic machine as a thresher. In later years, used a John deere 12A combine with a scour kleen attachment. I think an Allis combine would have worked better.

ss55 · Sep 21, 2015

Weather and species of hay probably made a difference back then too. I can't speculate on yields back then. A general rule of thumb in Iowa was to plan that about 1/4 of the farm will be needed to provide feed and straw bedding for the horses.

Stan - Florida · Sep 21, 2015

Yep, our old A-C All-Crop '60' did a good job on clover seed. Also did a good job on popcorn back in the early '50s.

Den N Ms · Sep 21, 2015

Yes, those old Allis Chalmers combines were well known as the best clover machine made back in the day.

37chief · Sep 21, 2015

Dad cut his hay with his F 12. Raked it in to rows . Then go down the rows and put the rows into piles with his Sulki rake, or called a dump rake. Then the shocks were straightened up by hand. When time to bale, the shocks were brought to the stationary baler with his buck rake mounted on his F 12. Before my time all the bales were three wire hand tied, probably weighing over 100 lbs. Then he used the neighbors New Holland baler with the four cylinder Wisconsin motor. By just going down the rows made things much easier. Dad Sold all his hay to horse people. He probably farmed 25 acres and brought me along to drag the bales to him to stack. The good old days. Stan

gene bender · Sep 21, 2015

Sickle mower han an attachment bolted to the bar and windrowed as it cut. When it got realy black and dead combined with an Allis combine or used a buck rake and pushed it to a statioary thresher pitchforked into fedder and bagged out of thresher took bags to town where they ran thru a cleaner again sold excess brought rest home for seed next yr. Straw pile from thresher was baled but combine just scattered in the field usually had a spreader on the combine. BTDT

Old weldor · Sep 21, 2015

All your talk about red clover makes me itch just thinking about it.

fixerupper · Sep 21, 2015

I would guess we have the potential to get more per acre today. Back in those days we fertilized our hay less than we do today. Soil sampling wasn't practiced as much as it is today. I remember hauling manure on some of the hay ground after the second cutting back in the fifties and sixties but we didn't come close to covering the whole field and no commercial fertilizer was used to supplement it. Today we also have some higher yielding varieties of alfalfa if we can afford to buy the seed.

rrlund · Sep 21, 2015

They'd harvest everything from clover seed to coconuts.

JD Seller · Sep 21, 2015

In the early 1960s I can remember us raising clover and timothy hay. In good years we would get 45-50 50LBS bales per acre first cutting. Then maybe 15-20 bales second cutting. So in a good year we would get around one and half ton per acre. Now we will get 4-5 in good alfalfa/grass hay. The biggest difference is fertility. In the 1960s the left over manure form the prior grain crops was about all the hay got. Now the hay ground has fertilizer applied every year just like the row crops.

just another old geezer · Sep 21, 2015

80 bales timothy clover mix first crop, 45 bales per acre second crop. 45 lb 3 ft long tight bales. the record was 2300 bales in a single day with a farmall H on a 45 baler, baling steady from 10 am to 8:30 pm. my dad stacked it all in the mow. 64 bales to a load. 18 minutes per load. Us kids had to do the milking that night.

just another old geezer · Sep 21, 2015

yea, but getting the palm tree up the feeder into the cylinder was a real pain.

ss55 · Sep 21, 2015

64 bales per load sounds like you were using a grapple fork to lift the bales into the mow. 8 bales per lift?

paul · Sep 22, 2015

The real hay makers were before that time, before tractors and balers, you had to put up fuel for your horsepower. Man those folk worked, dawn to dusk......

Paul

Bruce from Can. · Sep 22, 2015

My Dad got all moderen in 48 or 50 when he bought a 7 foot IH mower, a AC pto rake and a AC roto baler. I still have the baler.

farmerwithmutt · Sep 22, 2015

Seen a couple with corn heads on them wish I had got my hands on them think they ended up as scrap

just another old geezer · Sep 24, 2015

yup. grapple fork. uncle was a master with it. 64 ford on the rope. driver barley had time to shift gears.

OT - Tons of Hay, Back in the Day...

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