# Leaf Shuttering Problem while baling



## RiarFarms (Mar 29, 2010)

Hi,

I have Alfalfa Plantation on approx 200 Acres in Pakistan primarily for Export purposes. 
We cut the Alfalfa before bringing it to our drying area for sun drying. Once dried to the desired level, we use a stationary Baler with manual feeding to make square bales of various sizes and weight. 
We are having an issue with leaf shuttering. When the hay is transported from the drying field to the baler a lot of leaves get dropped. At the same time further shuttering takes place when the hay is loaded in the Baler.
is there anyway to avoid this shuttering. Some kind of spray maybe?
I also used a John Deer round baler on another site behind a tractor. But the problem of leaf shuttering remains and the bale that it extracts has little to no leaves left. 
Can anyone suggest any remedy. Thanks

Ahsan Riar


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## BCFENCE (Jul 26, 2008)

Thats going to be tough, When its handeled that many times , Really bad when its dry and moved around much, Really bad leaf lose is bad. Theirs one post on here about cutting and drying alfalfa with heat indoors, I think they spray water on it after it dries before they bale it to help save leaves.


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

Can you move it to the drying area sooner after cutting? It sounds like the leaves are just getting too dry causing them to fall off. How are you cutting it? Over conditioning of the leaves will cause em to drop off as well.

I can't even take a guess about your area, but around here it's possible to have some very light leaf hopper damage and the damaged leaves drop right off.


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## hay wilson in TX (Jan 28, 2009)

It can be a simple solution.

The leaves will shatter when they are less than 40% Moisture. When the air close to the hay is more than 90% relative humidity, there will be enough moisture to hold the leaves. This is usually during the first few hours of each morning. Damp with dew is good, at this time.

The leaves dry very quickly. The stems dry more slowly. It is normal for the leaves to be too dry bale or even handle, while the stems still have to much moisture to safely bale.

The evening before I expect to bale hay I want my stems dry enough to snap. Then the next day while the humidity is still high enough there will be enough moisture to bale. To bale cured hay, air right down next to the hay, should be less than 65% Relative Humidity but more than 50% Relative humidity.

In some climates the humidity is never high enough to bale with out loosing leaves. In this country some farmer must bale at night to have enough humidity to keep the leaves from shattering.

*Hay making is really very simple. The problem is most people are not simple enough to do it correctly. *
That is a statement made in joking, but it has a lot of truth to it.


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## Rodney R (Jun 11, 2008)

Let me get this all straight.... you cut the hay, and transport it to some sort of area where it is dried, and then it gets loaded up and taken to the baler? Do you make that many different sizes/weights of bales that you cannot do it in the field? All of the extra handling must make this hay expensive. Why can't the hay dry in the field? You say the drying area is for sun drying...... do you get too much dew?

I would say that you need to find a way to raise the humidity when you transport the alfala to the baler. The harvesttec dew simulator used some sort of soultion to spray on the hay, and the secret ingredient was silicone....... I think you'd have to formulate your own mixture for what you want to do.

Rodney


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## hay wilson in TX (Jan 28, 2009)

Just doing what they can with what they got. Got to admire them for that.

From what I have seen in the land of Elephants, they will be baling with what probably would look much like one of the horse powered presses, that was popular in this country less than 100 years ago.

In many parts of the world animals are hand fed forages that were cut by hand, and fed green.

When they come to appreciate what a little humidity can do for them things will smooth out. With their problem of leaf shattering I would believe they are in a reasonably arid climate & not a humid jungle climate.

My Grandfather used to tell me about loose stacking hay on the back of a flat bed truck and hauling the hay into the city for the livestock kept there. 
When he became mechanized a baler operator would park a baler at his barn door and bale hay all day using a steam engine with a belt drive for power.
Then hauling hay to the city became a real adventure. The extra weight moved the CG enough aft that going up to cross a rail road track the wheels would come off the ground and he had no steering until he got back on level ground and applied the breaks.


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## RiarFarms (Mar 29, 2010)

Dear All,
Many thanks for your replies.
1. The Hay is cut using a cutter behind a tractor. This is a disc Mower with 2-4 discs whcih cuts and then forms windrows as it moves on. The Wet Alfalfa is then loaded on a flat bed and brought to the drying Area the very same day. Most of the times within 2 hours of cutting. It is Sun dried for a maximum of 2 days. This is as long as it takes for it to dry in the current heat. Approx 40 degrees celcius.

2. The baler is installed in the drying area. Once the hay is dried upto the moisture level of <16% it is gathered and fed into the baler. This is where most of the leaf shuttering takes place. Though I have setup a mechanism of feeding the shuttered leaves along with the rest of the hay before compressing it but it takes a lot of time and labor, which is not cheap anymore in the land of the elephants as my dear friend wilson puts it.








The baler being used works on Hydraulics. It is powered by the 25HP electric motor OR by a tractor's shaft. The assembly used to control the hydraulic Oil is the same as the one used in heavy duty excavators.

3. 50% of my plantation is on contract bases. Other farmers grow it on their fields and i buy it from them in wet form. If they let it dry on their fields, the weight will be reduced and in turn the price. The problem is not when it is transported to the drying area, but when it is gathered and loaded in the baler.

4. Rodney mentioned increasing the moisture of the Hay or maybe baling it at a higher moisture level. But correct me if I am wrong, if the bales are made at a moisture level higher than 17%, wouldnt they go bad, wilt, fermentation takes place(fungus).

5. Somebody advised to use propanic Acid before cutting. According to them if sprayed right before cutting (installed on top of the cutter) it reduces leaf shuttering immensly. Rodney can you advise the name of the solution that you are talking about. Maybe it is the same.

once again I appreciate the feedback from you all.


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## hay wilson in TX (Jan 28, 2009)

There is a system that they say will make hay in 4 hours. It is costly but it does make a nice product. The key to the system is they have a system to moisten the hay before handling it to bale. 
What they do is expose the hay to a fine mist of water that puts some moisture back into the leaves. This makes the leaves pliable and they do not shatter off the stems.

Your goal is to have the stems dry and the leaves to have a little more than 20% moisture. This surface moisture of dew will not cause th hay to mold and will soon disparate. If you do use a mist of moisture directed on the hay, you may have to wait 15 minutes before handling, and may find after 30 minutes the hay is again too dry and the leaves will shatter.

Another option is to bale your hay at night when the humidity is above 55% maybe 60%. This is what the USA farmers have to do raising hay in the American Desert.

Here in Central Texas hay that is fully cured can be handled roughly if the humidity is above 90%. Here I can bale fully cured hay if the humidity is below 65% for baling during the day. My leaves will shatter to much when the humidity is below 55%. This allows me to bale hay for 2 some times as much as 3 hours during the day time. To bale at night I can start when the humidity is about 65%. Here I have about 4 or 5 hours of baling time before the hay becomes too damp to bale safely.

The basic rules for harvesting hay are the same, it is the local conditions that create local ways to accomplish our goal.

India is a vast country with a great variety of climates, and conditions. 
.*Baling at night when the air is cooler and the humidity is higher may solve your problem*


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

You're using a 2 or 4 disc mower, do they have conditioning rolls? Are they actually drum mowers? I'm guessing they are. If they are and you're not crimping the stems in some way, by time the stems are dry, the leaves will be like dust.

Get back to us on exactly what kind of disc mower they are.

Unless I misread something, at this point I'm guessing you're biggest reason for the leaf shatter is the lack of conditioning of the stems.


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## Rodney R (Jun 11, 2008)

Riar,
Thanks for clearing things up! I am not sure what the product was called, but it was made by Harvesttec, and it was used with the machine they call the dew simulator - only used in western states, I've only seen videos of them at work. But, they were able to used high pressure water (they called it cold steam) and this solution - they said it had silicone in it, and that was what made it work. Within about 15 minutes it had done its work.

Proprionic acid is used for during the baling process to be able to handle a higher moisture content, say 17 to 23% moisture - They claim up to 30%, but I get real leary going over 25%. There is a solution that you can spray on hay to make it dry faster once it is cut, but the HUGE drawback is the volume of water that it takes, I have no idea on performace, and there are very few folks that have used it, or still do use it.

The drying area.... is there some sort of way to make a fine mist of water around it, or near the hay? Wilson has mentioned that some guys will turn on their irrigation system, to make their hay more damp to allow baling. I'm just thinking that if you could apply something like that, it might work?

Rodney


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