# Square bales today



## Colby (Mar 5, 2012)

First (yesterday) I cut half of our 60 acre square bale field. I lay it in narrow windrows where it will dry slower in the 105 degree heat but it still doesn't work. Plus there isn't any hay. 









Next (today) we tedder to get even color distribution 








This picture was taken about 3pm today and as you can see the hay was already over dry but there's just nothing you can do about it with zero moisture in the ground or in the hay.

I tedder and raked for the most part today and and I would ted there and back then rake there and back and continue the process 









But I did do some square baling 









The loading man... We stay out of his way lol 









And all the rigs 









Thanks for looking


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## Tim/South (Dec 12, 2011)

You have a first class operation going on. It is nice to see a tractor for every implement. Just swap tractors and do what needs doing.

Nice level fields, long windrows and good looking hay.

Thanks for sharing.


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## R Ball (Feb 26, 2013)

I don't understand why you would Tedder if the hay is dry. Shatter of the hay causes leaf loss which impacts quality. I hear your color concern but still,not sure that's the worry.

Good looking operation though.


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## kidbalehook (Mar 19, 2013)

Cool pics Colby! You've got some nice equipement there. I live in NW Ohio and there has been a few occasions it was so dry and so hot, we cut the hay with haybine and left it same width as our baler could pick up. We never raked it or anything... left it lay and on the 3rd afternoon we baled it just like it was laid down coming out of haybine. The top of the hay was bleached white and underneath it was green as could be. When it mixed up into the bales it was just beautiful... lots of leaves. Our typical way (with perfect weather) is cut in morning of day one (we leave windrows about 3' wide), on 3rd day we rake hay around lunchtime onto the dry ground inbetween rows being careful to turn green side up and then we bale around 3 p.m. It's like anything else, everyone has their way of doing it!


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

I am using this to make some suggestions, and avoid sounding critical.

I agree with the others you have some nice looking equipment.

Lee County is not that far from Bell County for climate.

I will start my suggestions with the mowing. If you had dropped your hay in a 6 ft wide swath and been finished mowing by 3 pm the leaves would have been dried to less than 42% moisture and been essentially dead. No respiration over night so the next morning the now cured leaves will be rehydrated and still have the same energy level they went into the night with.

No need for a tedder. (Now if you had close to 100 bales to the acre, then follow the mower conditioner with the tedder and expose 100% of the hay to the drying effect of the sun.)

With your yield, rake the hay at first light the next morning. Rake with the dew. Hopefully with a 90% humidity, down next to the windrow.
(With a higher yield leave the hay alone in the wide swath and rake the hay at first light the second morning.)

Square baling you should be able to start baling when the humidity is passing 70%.
Lately that has been 10 am here. today it would have been 9 am!
The forecast suggest we should be done raking by 8 am, today.
For baling start about 9 am and be finished baling by 11 am, today here near Temple. The forecast are rounded off to the nearest even hour, and all haying weather is local.

In your case you should have been able to bale the morning following the day it was raked.
This is starting when the hay is *almost* too damp to bale, and finishing when the hay is dry enough to shatter excessive amounts of leaves.
If you can bale 400 bales an hour that means 800 bales maybe 1,000 bales but also maybe only 600 bales for one day's baling.
I find I can bale 5.5 acres of coastal between too tough for baling to too dry for baling.
Thursday I started baling at about 73% relative humidity, and by the time I had the bale length at 34" and the weight at 55 lbs the humidity should have been below 70%, The yield was 131 bales/acre and I had to stop for leaf shatter before done. I finished baling on Friday.

What I am suggesting is for better leaf retention you might want to have two or more sq balers in a 60 acre field.

Note:
In 2011 it was so dry that many days I had less than 1 hour to bale, during the day. So I ran side by side with a 5 X 5 Round baler with net wrap. The round bales were 2% lower in Protein than the Square bales.

The reason for a wide swath is the leaves all have small breathing holes where moisture leaves the plant after bringing up the needed fertility elements. As long as the plant has direct sunshine those holes will stay open. Put them in the dark and they will close.
Plus the heat of our sun heats the sap in the plant. This increases the vapor pressure of the moisture and this steam pressure forces the moisture out the nearest openings.

A whole lot of this I got from reading. Some from observation. All I can say is it works here in the CenTex.

There are other methods that get the job done, but this is possibly the best we have going for us.

In the Pecos Valley of NM they do not need the wide swath to cure hay
. 
In the mountain valleys of West Virginia they NEED a full width hay swath.

Bill Wilson [email protected]
Hay Farmer
Just south of Temple TX.
High shrink clay soil, High CEC at 50, excessive amounts of calcium.
Raise coastal bermudagrass for hay and alfalfa for hay.


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## R Ball (Feb 26, 2013)

Yep, I hear you hay Wilson. Unreal, we don't see that challenge here.


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## Colby (Mar 5, 2012)

I cut this field from 7am-11am and baled it the next day starting at 9 yes it made alot better hay that morning but there's so much you can do square baling is a slow all day process. Bill you've also gotten probably 5 more inches of rain than us. It hasn't rained here in June. Not a drop. No dew neither here. You do the best you can in a drought and this hay will probably get feed to our own cattle and horses


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## Teslan (Aug 20, 2011)

What kind of grass hay is in this picture that you worry about it shattering? It has to be 100 degrees and 10 percent humidity here before I would think about not baling grass hay. But I'm thinking OG or Brome.


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## Colby (Mar 5, 2012)

Teslan said:


> What kind of grass hay is in this picture that you worry about it shattering? It has to be 100 degrees and 10 percent humidity here before I would think about not baling grass hay. But I'm thinking OG or Brome.


It's coastal and common Bermuda


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## Colby (Mar 5, 2012)

Plus the protein thing does not concern me in the "horse hay" scam. My leather boot may be 100% protein but 0% digestibility. You want hay with high digestibility because your going to have to feed grain with it no matter what unless its alfalfa but then again that's a different subject. You can't get by with just feeding coastal hay to horses and feeding your horses right. There's no way. I'd want high digestibility not high protein cause yen your getting into hay that's too hot


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

They tell me that the highest digestiblity hay is PM Harvested.

Not much is said about this, but a MS Student at East Texas State Teachers College ( TX A&M at Commerce ) gave a paper on feeding bermudagrass to horses looking at AM hay & PM hay. The PM hay was tops.

In theory hay that is cut no later than 3 pm will dry enough to stop respiration by dark.

I asked about this at another time and place, and Larry Redman got on me about it. Contends that maturity at cutting has more to do with digestibility. Which is true, BUT I asked if that higher quality hay would not be even higher quality if it were a PM cut. We are talking about nonstructural carbohydrates, RFV, TDN, Net energy for lactation or growth.

I have moved on, but I do start cutting my hay close to noon, timed to be finished well before 3 pm.

The Lady who did the research at Commerce is probably a Vet by now.

Using a Graph showing the amount of pan evaporation required to cure hay down from 80% moisture to 20% moisture, if we really watch our timing, and correctly estimate our yield in theory we can have the hay at stem snapping cured stage going into the night time. Then we can bale with the huidity the that night or with the humidity in the morning.

In theory we can cut as soon as the dew is dried off, drop the hay in a windrow, and allow the 20 knot breeze and 5% relative humidity, with 100º F, we could bale before midnight and do a cut rake and bale all in the same day.


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## terraceridge (Jul 21, 2011)

Colby said:


> Plus the protein thing does not concern me in the "horse hay" scam. My leather boot may be 100% protein but 0% digestibility. You want hay with high digestibility because your going to have to feed grain with it no matter what unless its alfalfa but then again that's a different subject. You can't get by with just feeding coastal hay to horses and feeding your horses right. There's no way. I'd want high digestibility not high protein cause yen your getting into hay that's too hot


I agree that the digestibility of hay is extremely important, but I also believe that many horses' protein and energy requirements can be met by a diet consisting of only bermudagrass hay, based on the information found here: http://www.ag.auburn.edu/~chibale/an13horsefeeding.pdf

Using the formula on that site, a 1000 lb. horse needs about 15 Mcal. of digestible energy per day. My hay usually tests between 0.9 and 1.00 Mcal/lb, so if 20 lbs. of my hay were fed per day, between 18 and 20 Mcal. of digestible energy would be supplied, exceeding the requirements of a maintenance diet.

Regarding protein, that site lists 1.46 lbs/day as the protein requirement of a mature horse. This means that if 20 lbs. of hay were fed per day, it would only need to be 7.3% protein to sustain a mature horse.


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## discbinedr (Mar 4, 2013)

Looks like fun. Thanks for sharing.


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## clowers (Feb 11, 2011)

We cut alfalf on day one Ted it on the 2nd day before daylight to reduce leaf loss. 3rd morning we rake it before daylight. TRy to start baling by 11 or when the dew is dispersing from the windrow


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## clowers (Feb 11, 2011)

That's in east Texas Gregg county


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## rjmoses (Apr 4, 2010)

Different strokes for different folks.

It's unusual the RH hereabouts is under 90% before 10AM and the dew usually comes in about 7:30PM.

I find my best mowing time is to start about 10-11AM and try to finish by 2PM. And a lot of this depends on 1st, 2nd or 3rd cutting.

I typically start raking about 10AM when the morning dew is about 50% burned off and start baling about 1-1:30PM. But some days I can't start baling until 3-4PM.

The real trick in haying is to take the common knowledge and tailor it to your crop, environment, equipment, facilities and the needs of the day.

E.g., yesterday I was finally able to do the first cutting on my last orchardgrass field. The growth was unbelievable in this field, so much so that you couldn't hardly walk through it.

I set my moco to leave 5.5" stubble for two reasons. First, the ground was wet underneath (we had .4" rain Tuesday), so I wanted the OG high off the ground. Second, in a normal year, I'd be doing my 2nd cutting about this time. By mowing tall, I'm giving that OG more sugars so it can regrow as fast as possible before it might go dormant for the summer.

I'm hoping that I can get my 2nd cutting about Aug 12th, assuming it stays cool and wet like it has so far this year.

Ralph


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## FarmerCline (Oct 12, 2011)

rjmoses said:


> Different strokes for different folks.It's unusual the RH hereabouts is under 90% before 10AM and the dew usually comes in about 7:30PM.I find my best mowing time is to start about 10-11AM and try to finish by 2PM. And a lot of this depends on 1st, 2nd or 3rd cutting.I typically start raking about 10AM when the morning dew is about 50% burned off and start baling about 1-1:30PM. But some days I can't start baling until 3-4PM.The real trick in haying is to take the common knowledge and tailor it to your crop, environment, equipment, facilities and the needs of the day.E.g., yesterday I was finally able to do the first cutting on my last orchardgrass field. The growth was unbelievable in this field, so much so that you couldn't hardly walk through it.I set my moco to leave 5.5" stubble for two reasons. First, the ground was wet underneath (we had .4" rain Tuesday), so I wanted the OG high off the ground. Second, in a normal year, I'd be doing my 2nd cutting about this time. By mowing tall, I'm giving that OG more sugars so it can regrow as fast as possible before it might go dormant for the summer.I'm hoping that I can get my 2nd cutting about Aug 12th, assuming it stays cool and wet like it has so far this year.Ralph


 Ralph, it sounds like your baling conditions and humidity are quite similar to mine. I wouldn't have thought that Illinois would be quite that humid.


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## rjmoses (Apr 4, 2010)

FarmerCline said:


> Ralph, it sounds like your baling conditions and humidity are quite similar to mine. I wouldn't have thought that Illinois would be quite that humid.


Most of Illinois is not like this, but I live between the Illinois and Mississippi rivers and about 3 miles from the Missouri river. My micro-climate is radically different that even 30 miles away because the rivers pump extra humidity into the air, especially when they are flooding like this year.

Low humidity over the last week occurred yesterday--58%.

Here's a couple of pictures from this morning of my hay ground. I even checked that it was really fog, not a dirty camera lens.















Ralph


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