# Rough field (To bale or not to bale)



## CDennyRun (Nov 26, 2015)

One of the fields I baled this yeas was rough.. I was basically pissed the whole time I was in the field, ans swore i wouldn't bale it again. The flip side is the grass is great, and we didn't bale enough for our horses this year. It's only two acres, and this won't get us all that we need, but it would help. I'm just not sure beating up my equipment and myself is worth the few hundred bucks of hay I'll get out of it. A the same rate, I know we really need the hay. I'm torn!

Thoughts?

Chris


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## somedevildawg (Jun 20, 2011)

Keep it and go really slowwwwww


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## IHCman (Aug 27, 2011)

I've baled to many rough fields. They're all on my schedule to break up and reseed but it always seems the hay is nice on the rough stuff so other fields that have poorer production get broke up first. Also hay some native stuff that don't want to break up but sure is getting rough. Thinking of renting a Lawson land aerator or a land roller and going over some of that to see if it smooths it out any.


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## somedevildawg (Jun 20, 2011)

I will work a field as long as necessary to achieve as smooth a field as possible.....here we plant a field and it may be in production for a long time so it pays dividends to get it done right.


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## Swv.farmer (Jan 2, 2016)

Go slow and bale it.


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## glasswrongsize (Sep 15, 2015)

Swv.farmer said:


> Go slow and bale it.





somedevildawg said:


> Keep it and go really slowwwwww


^^^^^^^ That's my vote as I have one the exact same a size and condition and I would hate to think that I have made the wrong choice 

...and like IHCman, poorer production fields have dibs on my time/money for redoing.

73, Mark


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## CDennyRun (Nov 26, 2015)

Thanks guys. I just went and checked out the field. The grass its self looks good, but not growing all that great. I baled it in early June (cut it sky high because of how rough the field is), and it's only about 16" tall. It's probably rained three inches since than intermittently, and the weather has been amazing. I'm guessing the PH is probably around 6 just like my other two fields, which would explain it.

I think I'll wait and see what the grass does, and bale it accordingly.

Thanks folks!

Chris


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## slowzuki (Mar 8, 2011)

Sounds like almost all my fields!


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## CDennyRun (Nov 26, 2015)

slowzuki said:


> Sounds like almost all my fields!


Ha ha ha! I'm sorry


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## Lostin55 (Sep 21, 2013)

Is it corrugated?


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## Tim/South (Dec 12, 2011)

One of my leased fields is rough and I dread cutting it. The previous owner cut it up with a 30 foot main tillage disk and never went back with a leveling disk. He also did not disk with the contour in an attempt to knock the terraces down. I cut in the direction of the furrows I just go slow. This means I have to go up and down the terraces rather than running with them. It is 40+ acres and takes forever to cut. I just go slow. Good hay and I can get 100 rolls if we have rain.

Farmers learn to do what we have to do to get the jib done.


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## slowzuki (Mar 8, 2011)

Thats like one of my fields, 25 acres was fall plowed then they didn't plant it in the spring. Its come up nicely in timothy but is as rough as can be. My raking/tedding tractor is like riding a jackhammer on the headlands.



Tim/South said:


> One of my leased fields is rough and I dread cutting it. The previous owner cut it up with a 30 foot main tillage disk and never went back with a leveling disk. He also did not disk with the contour in an attempt to knock the terraces down. I cut in the direction of the furrows I just go slow. This means I have to go up and down the terraces rather than running with them. It is 40+ acres and takes forever to cut. I just go slow. Good hay and I can get 100 rolls if we have rain.
> 
> Farmers learn to do what we have to do to get the jib done.


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## CDennyRun (Nov 26, 2015)

Lostin55 said:


> Is it corrugated?


Nope, it just wasn't done right. A guy plowed it with a three bottom plow a few years back and didn't use any kind of harrow. He just seeded over that. Fun times!

Chris


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## Lostin55 (Sep 21, 2013)

CDennyRun said:


> Nope, it just wasn't done right. A guy plowed it with a three bottom plow a few years back and didn't use any kind of harrow. He just seeded over that. Fun times!
> 
> Chris


Ouch. That isn't good.


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

Being that it's only two acres, if the stand is good I'd just go slow. How long does it take to do two acres? Not that long.

Course, it wouldn't take a fortune to tear it up and do it right, since it's only two acres... just time, money, and diesel. Torn up equipment is no fun. I'd go slow or not go at all on that account, or if time is THAT short, then seriously plan on redoing it...

I did a custom job one time that turned out to be a NIGHTMARE of hog wallows and mess... rode it out through the first about 15% of the job, until the mower busted. Folding drag link busted and took out the driveshaft-- OUCH! I came back and raked and baled what I had cut, but begged off the rest of the job-- just didn't see tearing up machinery for one mediocre job, especially when the landowner was trying to jew me down on rates anyway.

Later! OL J R


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## CDennyRun (Nov 26, 2015)

luke strawwalker said:


> Being that it's only two acres, if the stand is good I'd just go slow. How long does it take to do two acres? Not that long.
> 
> Course, it wouldn't take a fortune to tear it up and do it right, since it's only two acres... just time, money, and diesel. Torn up equipment is no fun. I'd go slow or not go at all on that account, or if time is THAT short, then seriously plan on redoing it...
> 
> ...


Yep, limping your equipment home is not a good feeling.

It doesn't take too long to cut, rake and bale two acres, but it did take probably twice as long as it should have last time, because of how slow I had to go. It didn't help that I brush hogged it several months prior, to get rid of the two years of growth. I use a sickle bar mower, and those things glog up in a heartbeat when they hit clumps left behind from brush hoggin. I think it took me four hours to cut that little field, and I broke two pitman arms.

All that said.. I think I'm gona bale it! Ha ha ha

Chris


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## slowzuki (Mar 8, 2011)

I understand that, I broke my mower this week for the second time on a leased field. Was only a 2 welding rod fix this time.


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## slowzuki (Mar 8, 2011)

délete double post.


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## JD3430 (Jan 1, 2012)

I get all the "bad" fields. Bumpy weeds, or flood plain, or all of the above.
I thought I hit the jackpot 3 years ago when the local BTO called me and offered me 20 acres. I knew it was flood prone, but didn't know it was also bumpy and full of weeds. 
I got a "2-fer"... No a 3-"fer" with that field. Then to make it worse, you have to go over a RR track berm to get in and out. Lol
Hang in there. Your perserverence will pay off....someday. 
I just got a nice smooth, albeit nerve racking farm to do. Thought to myself, "wow, it can be THIS good!?"

This is a crazy, but never-a-dull-moment business. You need to make it through the first 5 years to give yourself a chance to pay down equipment expenses, acquire land, customers and a good reputation. Then maybe, just maybe, you can make it. Lol

I'm in year 4 and still struggling with growing too fast.


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

CDennyRun said:


> Yep, limping your equipment home is not a good feeling.
> 
> It doesn't take too long to cut, rake and bale two acres, but it did take probably twice as long as it should have last time, because of how slow I had to go. It didn't help that I brush hogged it several months prior, to get rid of the two years of growth. I use a sickle bar mower, and those things glog up in a heartbeat when they hit clumps left behind from brush hoggin. I think it took me four hours to cut that little field, and I broke two pitman arms.
> 
> ...


Yep, the joys of pitman mowers. I used to run our Ford 501 mower on the old Jubilee, until it had about had it from old age, and started running it on the Ford 6600. Busted a LOT of pitmans on there! One thing I did while working on it-- I tightened up the belt that was running VERY loose on it, when I did some work and adjustment on the sickle. After busting several pitmans, the old man fussed at me-- WHY did you tighten up the belt?? Grandpa and I loosened that thing up as much as we could to reduce the number of pitmans we broke! AHA! I see (too late).

Couldn't replace it with the Zweegers drum mower fast enough-- that's been MANY years ago!

Anyway, it's a tradeoff between cash and time. If you're pressed for time, it's worth the money to work up those fields and smooth 'em out and plant something. If you're pressed for cash, probly better to leave 'em be and just take your time, at least for now.

If you wanted to mess around with it and try to smooth it out, after you've taken a cut and the stubble is short, you might try running a tandem disk over it, preferably pulling a drag harrow behind it. Our bermuda field was ATE UP with fire ant mounds a couple years ago and I put the double disk on with two seven-foot drag harrow sections chained behind it, and set the gang angles as straight as they'd go (lowest angle for less soil disturbance-- didn't want to plow out the grass, just stir the dirt some and knock down anthills). The disk did a good job of cutting into the soil a couple inches or so, slicing through anthills and flipping them over, and then the drag harrow behind crumbled up the dirt and anthills and dragged it out. I disked the whole field straight longwise and then on the bias at an angle and it was smooth as a pool table when I finished. The grass came back fast and strong-- bermuda responds well to having the runners cut- it develops a new plant everywhere a joint "roots down" into the soil. Course not all forages respond the same, but many do. So long as you don't COMPLETELY rip out the crowns or roots, it should survive and generally come back stronger, but it takes some time.

Later! OL J R


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## slowzuki (Mar 8, 2011)

In timothy thats a good way to give weed seeds some bare soil and sun to germinate. I tried it once, maybe at a different time of year it could work better.



luke strawwalker said:


> Yep, the joys of pitman mowers. I used to run our Ford 501 mower on the old Jubilee, until it had about had it from old age, and started running it on the Ford 6600. Busted a LOT of pitmans on there! One thing I did while working on it-- I tightened up the belt that was running VERY loose on it, when I did some work and adjustment on the sickle. After busting several pitmans, the old man fussed at me-- WHY did you tighten up the belt?? Grandpa and I loosened that thing up as much as we could to reduce the number of pitmans we broke! AHA! I see (too late).
> 
> Couldn't replace it with the Zweegers drum mower fast enough-- that's been MANY years ago!
> 
> ...


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## RuttedField (Apr 24, 2016)

I retired this year and figured one of my "big projects" would be to rip open a corn field and seed it back into hay ground. I plowed and harrowed it and got it semi-smooth, but not to my liking. I did get the rocks picked off, but that was as far as I got. Its past august now and too late to seed as the grass would not be high enough to stave off winter kill so late in the growing season.

But saving grace...clover came up nice and thick. Granted weed seeds did too, but hey just bush hog the living snot out of them before they get to big and I would have a field of clover.

Nope, bush hog broke and is being rebuilt at the machine shop.

Looks like next year it will be ripped open again, harrowed, graded, and more rocks picked off.

I will say this though, as rough as that field is, it was in no way just plowed and seeded. Don't take this the wrong way, but wow...just wow. This farm boy has drove over many plowed acres of ground...and wow!

(BTW: my username RuttedField is a misnomer. I got that because if we chopped fields when the field was wet, I would go back over the ruts and flatten them with my dozer or flat of my tractor bucket. I was a little over the top at ensuring my fields were dead smooth. You guys have no idea how bad I wish I had a John Deere 770 GP Grader).


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## CDennyRun (Nov 26, 2015)

luke strawwalker said:


> Yep, the joys of pitman mowers. I used to run our Ford 501 mower on the old Jubilee, until it had about had it from old age, and started running it on the Ford 6600. Busted a LOT of pitmans on there! One thing I did while working on it-- I tightened up the belt that was running VERY loose on it, when I did some work and adjustment on the sickle. After busting several pitmans, the old man fussed at me-- WHY did you tighten up the belt?? Grandpa and I loosened that thing up as much as we could to reduce the number of pitmans we broke! AHA! I see (too late).
> 
> Couldn't replace it with the Zweegers drum mower fast enough-- that's been MANY years ago!
> 
> ...


Thanks JR! I've been keeping my eye out for a good disc and drag harrow. My plan is to first lime everything, and at least get a chain/drag harrow and broadcast spreader this winter with tax returns and hopefully a Christmas bonus. If I happen to be able to afford a disc harrow, I would be stoked!

This field is mostly timothy, some sort of rye, some clover and spots of canary grass. Aside from the canary grass, the hay is great! The horses love it. How do you think those grasses would handle the discing? If I need to, I could throw some seed on top of the heavily disced/bad spots.

Chris


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

CDennyRun said:


> Thanks JR! I've been keeping my eye out for a good disc and drag harrow. My plan is to first lime everything, and at least get a chain/drag harrow and broadcast spreader this winter with tax returns and hopefully a Christmas bonus. If I happen to be able to afford a disc harrow, I would be stoked!
> 
> This field is mostly timothy, some sort of rye, some clover and spots of canary grass. Aside from the canary grass, the hay is great! The horses love it. How do you think those grasses would handle the discing? If I need to, I could throw some seed on top of the heavily disced/bad spots.
> 
> Chris


Don't know anything about timothy or canary grass. Perennial rye seems to come back (around here) from practically anything, and clover... well, it seems to survive even when you don't really want it to.

Sounds like you have a plan. You didn't say what size disk you're looking for, but IMHO you can't beat most of the older IH disks. International Harvester KNEW how to make a good disk! When we were still row cropping and I was looking to upgrade from our old worn-out cracked and welded up many times Ford 201 disk, I took a look at a lot of different disks, and picked up an IH 470 in great shape for $1,100. The blades are worn down to about 16-18 inches, but they still have some life left in them. It's a 7.5 inch spacing, 14 foot disk, with tandem wheels on it, heavy cast-iron spools between the blades (instead of the lightweight pipe spools on our old Ford disk and most of the JD disks I looked at) and a heavy angle-iron frame and box-iron beams over the gangs. Some of the Deere disks were easier to adjust for angle (some even held together with pivot pins) but they get a LOT of slop in them as they get older, and I didn't like that at all-- just seems like it's on the way out when you can grab the disk gang and rock it back and forth several inches in it's mounts. Plus, the IH disk is built heavier. Course, a lot of it depends on what you can get in your price range at the time you want to buy...

Later and good luck! OL J R


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## glasswrongsize (Sep 15, 2015)

luke strawwalker said:


> . Some of the Deere disks were easier to adjust for angle (some even held together with pivot pins) but they get a LOT of slop in them as they get older, and I didn't like that at all-- just seems like it's on the way out when you can grab the disk gang and rock it back and forth several inches in it's mounts. Plus, the IH disk is built heavier. Course, a lot of it depends on what you can get in your price range at the time you want to buy...
> 
> Later and good luck! OL J R


I whole-heartedly agree with the IH disk. I've got an old model 37 (I think) IH disk and it cuts GREAT; it's a 9' disk and it adjusts like you say JD does? It has pins to quickly adjust the angle of the gangs. I also have a 13' JD disk that doesn't cut as well, but leaves a smoother field....and it's gangs are bolted solid with no easy adjustment.

Around here, generally speaking, a 12/13' (some measure the front, some the back...no "standard" around here) will run $3-400; a 10/11' will run $4-500 and a 8/9' will run 5-600 in decent usable shape with decent blades and in need of tires.

Food plotters have driven up the price on the smaller stuff...the smaller it is, the more it costs here.

73, Mark


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

I used to have a 10 foot Deere offset disk... it was basically a plowing disk and it worked good, but I never liked the Deere "trunnion mount" bearings... they were only held on by a little pin through the bearing trunnion when raised, but when the disk hit the ground the trunnions settled into "pockets" in the bottom of the standards that transferred the frame weight and thrust loads to the standards. It worked okay but the gangs swung back and forth and dangled like they were about to fall off any minute... I never liked that. It had the cone blades that would REALLY plow, but they also pulled HARD, and with an 9.5 inch blade spacing, it was better suited for plowing, which is what I used it for in the fall to disk out stubble and prepare for middlebusting. Only being 10 feet wide, I couldn't cover but three 40 inch rows a time, too, which increased my time to get done by 25% right off the bat. I kept it a few years and traded it off.









Our old Ford 210 disk is at least as old as I am (made around 1970 or so) and covered a LOT of acres, but using it in the fall to disk out stalks and then again in spring to disk in trifluralin ahead of cotton really took its toll. The stamped-steel channels that made up the frame weren't particularly good, either. The rear frame member across the rear gangs broke several times and I rewelded it, even fish-plated it, and it still cracked and broke. That's when I got sick of it and finally replaced it with the IH 470 disk, which is better in every way. I'm usually not a huge fan of IH equipment-- too much history with it, but I WILL say that IH made a heck of a disk! The Ford disk sat in the fence row for about 10 years until I pulled it out and rebuilt it, adding a regular steel channel iron across the back to reinforce the stamped channel iron original. Then I towed it behind the pickup 100 miles to the other farm, where I could use it for lighter duty work in the sandy soil up there.









When I was looking for a newer disk to replace the Ford, I looked at everything around, including a lot of Deere BW's and BWA's, among other model Deere disks, but I wasn't as impressed by their design. Everything held together by pins, 4x4 tubing main frame with flat irons trapping the gang tubes in between, and every one I looked at, I could rock the gangs back and forth due to wear in the pins and irons at the pivot points. Easy to adjust gang angle, but a rather weak design IMHO. Also the frame looked rather light and the whole disk just seemed built rather light, and I didn't like the tongue design either-- it just didn't look as 'beefy' for taking side loads of turning with the disk in the ground when necessary. The IH has a MUCH stronger tongue on it.

















Later! OL J R


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## CDennyRun (Nov 26, 2015)

Thanks for all the info guys. I'm not sure what size to get yet. My tractor is pretty small, but I do plan to upgrade to a 40-50HP in the next year or two. I'm probably going to get something smaller because I won't be haying anything larger than 10-15 acres a year, and probably will be several smaller 2-5 acre fields. At this point I'd be happy with a 6' wide something or other. I have no experience with them, but your insight is helping a LOT!

Chris


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