# Baling hay with the dew on



## BCFENCE

I was baling hay this afternoon and as it started getting dark the dew sets in the moisture starts going up so i stopped baling at about 24%, It was real dry earlier in the day. I guess my question is you guys that bale with the dew, Is that moisture the same as it being wet or is that just leaf moisture and can bale it alittle wetter, Im going by my harvest tech monitor in the tractor. The hay felt real dry by the touch but was reading wet by the monitor.
THANKS THOMAS


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## TBrown

We always run dew moisture to 30-32% with 10 lbs preservative/ton and never had a problem. I have always wanted to try running lower rates with dew moisture and pushing the upper limit just to see how it turned out but haven't had the time to do it yet. My dealer told me you could run up to 40% DEW MOISTURE with 10 lbs/ton but I always get scared before then.

BTW this is with a 3x3 large square baler


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## swmnhay

Dew moisture is just on the outside at first.My monitor goes to 30% than just reads WET over that.I can probably go another hour after it reaches 30% with a roundbaler if the stems were completly dry.If the bale won't come out of the baler it's probably time to stop.LOL


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## Heyhay..eh

We bale on the dew during hot dry spells generally (non this year). We set up to commence baling as the dew starts to set so we get some reference bales on the dry side then we go into the dew and test bales as we feel the dew building. The stopping point is when the tires show shiny black and some leaf starts to stick to the belts (round) or the knots pop (sm square). The bales that are baled on the dew are left in the field for at least one day before picking just to get any surface moisture evaporated.

I do not have any microscopic evidence but it appears that the dew sets on the out side of the hay and is slowly absorbed into the leaf firs and then stem when the leaf becomes saturated. That is when they will stick to the belt so you will have stopped before it gets into the stem. You can check this by rolling the leaf (alfalfa, clover, trefoil) between your finger and thumb. If it rolls without turning colour then you have not picked up too much moisture. As it gets damper you will notice that this test will show the leaf turning darker. When it rolls black you are saturated. 
We also use this test when determining how close we are getting to baling on a fresh cut ... take from the bottom of the swath.

I have always enjoyed night baling and if one could predict the dew better then that would be the time to make hay. If anyone knows how to predict how the dew will set like how many degrees of temperature drop give rise to a humidity increase, i would appreciate the formula.

Take care


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## hay wilson in TX

There is good information for when the humidity is going down but I have not seen anything for when the humidity is climbing. 
Than again it may be because most of the night baling is in the more desert like climate and too high a humidity is not a problem.

I will put the question over on talk.newagtalk.com Crops. Maybe someone there has an answer.


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## mlappin

In my part of the country it's possible to bale for awhile once the dew starts to set. Depends a lot on just how dry the hay got during the day and how heavy the dew is of course. Sometimes a person can get the rest of the field baled and only pick up 4-5 points of moisture according to the moniter, other times around here withing thirty minutes it will get so tough that I'll start blowing shearbolts out of the baler faster than its worth continuing to try to bale.

If it's the former and the hay goes from 16% up to 20%-22% I've never had a problem haveing it keep. Once it hits 22% around here and if it keeps rising it tends to accelerate on the moisture its picking up and then the shearbolts start to pop.


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## BCFENCE

Thanks everyone for their replies, Kinda hit the nail on the head on what i was thinkin, I also need some more lights. I reckon that will give me something else to do this winter, ill have to add that to the list.
THOMAS


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## swmnhay

Another thng I have noticed grass seems to take on dew moisture quicker than straight alf in the evenings.


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## hay wilson in TX

Viewing a thread - Baling hay with the dew on

I hope this link works and allows anyone interested to read the responses.


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## BCFENCE

Thanks hay wilson thats a big help, I know it helped me and i hope some others also. We didnt have any dew much last night and it also hasnt rained in 4 weeks so where dry anyways, so i just went as long as i could.
THOMAS


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## hay wilson in TX

For a number of reasons I am a dues paying member of Ky Forage & Grassland Council. Primary reason is I like Gary Lacefield.


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## mlappin

Depends on the weather here Wilson. I'm in northern Indiana and I've baled past dark on the rare occasion before. Course it has to have been dry for awhile, no wet ground, and it really helps if it should cloud over right before dark to keep the temp from dropping any or if a good stiff breeze should be blowing that always helps. Course like been mentioned more than once, has to be good dry hay, if its tough before the dew starts to set, then it seems to get way too tough for my round baler within 20-30 minutes. Course I have the standard model instead of a silage baler. If I'm baling first cutting I can get away with baling later than I can on the later cuttings. The finer grass tends to wrap around the rollers on the later cuttings when it starts to get tough.


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## haybaler101

Everyday is different in Indiana. We have stopped an hour before dark with dew as heavy as a rain and I have baled til 2 AM and could have kept going if I didn't run out of hay. I have baled as early as 7:30 am and seen days when the dew never goes away! Usually, we can run until about dark though.


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## mlappin

haybaler101 said:


> Everyday is different in Indiana. We have stopped an hour before dark with dew as heavy as a rain and I have baled til 2 AM and could have kept going if I didn't run out of hay. I have baled as early as 7:30 am and seen days when the dew never goes away! Usually, we can run until about dark though.


I feel you're pain, we get the same thing up here if not a little worse. Only rarely can we bale much past dark up here and like you, we've had dews so heavy that a person would have sworn it rained sometime during the night. I've actually had hay get wetter from noon on as the day went by from humidity alone. Get just the wrong wind and if its already hot and humid, it picks even more up from Lake Michigan.


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## Rodney R

The post above sums up what we've had to deal with. The other year I was sure that we'd start baling by 9PM.... At 11:30PM it was still too dry, but by midnight it was right on. I know of hay that was too dry at night, and when I awoke at 4:30 AM, I thought I screwed up, it's too wet now...... Wrong! Last year we baled right up to about midnight on some 1st cut, I picked bales till 5AM, and the little sprinkle we had overnight meant nearly nothing, after the wind kicked in. This year we have about 30 minutes between too dry and too wet. It seems that right here it's either like a desert, or a rainforest - no in between anymore. All of this in eastern PA..... who'd have thought?

But to go back to the original post - we feel comfortable running right up to 25% with dew moisture. In normal times the day gets real dry during the day, and we begin to bale once the leaves stop shattering - I like to see some intact leaves on the outside of the bale when we start. Most horse folks buy on looks, and a bale full of leaves sells quicker. Badger pretty well summed up my thoughts in the newagtalk link.

Rodney


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## Heyhay..eh

This is where the art of haying comes into play I guess. There are so many variables to consider when baling on the dew that we probably cannot understand the interactive dynamic of each element. Things like temperature and relative humidity at the commencement of the process and the elements that come into play as the process goes on. Temperature change, release of ground moisture on wetter fields, the capacity for the ground to take up humidity on dry ground, wind, cloud cover, type of hay being baled, the fact that conventional measuring tools may not give accurate guidance ... So we look to relying on reactive intuition and visual signs that tell us when to stop the process. And we need to adapt this art to the variances in our specific environments. This goes not only for the geographic variations that we share among us here but for the guy with the field across the road. I know when baling on the dew (which is generally night baling for us) the guy in the next field had to pull off before I did always, his field was lower so he was susceptible to heavier concentrations of dew and even light ground fog while we would be still rolling.

Baling on the dew is a sensory experience, watch for the signs, listen to your equipment, smell the hay

Take care


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## hay wilson in TX

This pretty well sums it all up. 
_Baling on the dew is a sensory experience, watch for the signs, listen to your equipment, smell the hay

Take care _

I have added 5 pages of typed notes to my hay harvesting notebook. The weight I put on this information will vary from what others find useful. The emphases, here, will change with time.

Thank you, one and all.


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## sedurbin

Hay Wilson, When will you publish this Notebook? I would really like to see it and I bet I am not the only one. ;-)


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## hay wilson in TX

http://www.wvu.edu/~agexten/pubnwsltr/TRIM/5811.pdf

http://utahhay.usu.edu/files/uploads/UHFS07 pdfs for web/Undersander Swathing and Conditioning.pdf 
(This one has a world of truth in it, unfortunately it is a collection of slides without the script.)

http://www.uwex.edu/ces/forage/pubs/drying_forage.pdf

http://alfalfa.ucdavis.edu/+symposium/proceedings/2008/08-235.pdf

Management Tips for Round Bale Hay Harvesting, Moving, and Storage - Virginia Cooperative Extension

http://www.uaex.edu/Other_Areas/publications/PDF/FSA-2005.pdf

http://www.uaex.edu/Other_Areas/publications/PDF/MP434.pdf

http://lubbock.tamu.edu/othercrops/pdf/alfalfa/nmsuharvestlosses.pdf

How to Maintain Forage Quality during Harvest and Storage

Determining Forage Moisture Concentration - Virginia Cooperative Extension

G4575 Making and Storing Quality Hay | University of Missouri Extension

The following is a collection of responses on New Ag Talk. 
http://talk.newagtalk.com

Viewing a thread - Baling hay with the dew on

Badger Huntley Montana

IF the hay is/was dry, 10-12% moisture you can handle quite a bit of dew. I've had moisture meters "peg out" at 40% on Dew moisture & have perfect hay IF the hay was DRY. Artifical moisture will read high as it is surface moisture that conducts electricity from the moisture meters contacts easyer than Natural moisture. I have baled hay with 50-100 PSI hyd tension on dew moisture making 75-90# 14x18x40" bales. But I want to be there. I tell my crew to quit when they get under 250 psi If I'm not there or have checked the hay myself. I want the stems to break when I bend the hay if I'm baling with 50-100 psi hyd tension on the dew. I haven't used a moisture meter in yrs as I have no fath in the readings they give me. The big sq Hesstons pressure to plunger load give me a better read than any moisture meter. On the small sq's I just make sure the stems are dry & don't worry about dew moisture untill I see drops on the tires, tires can be shinny, but no water drops.

801486

I kept baling for an hour in a fine mist with lots of wind one time to finish a field. The hay was really dry to begin with and it kept fine didn't burn brown.

Boomer

It all depends on how dry the hay is before the dew sets in. It also depends on the swath of the hay, meaning that double raked hay that is dry can handle a LOT more dew then single un-raked swaths. I will often start baling at night at the first sign of dew coming in, but I usually start baling the hay that was cut last in that field. Lets say you cut a 80ac field in one day, the hay that was cut first is going to be dryer then the hay that was cut when you finished that field so I start with the last cut then finish with the first cut when the dew gets heaver. It also depends on how much grass you may have in your field, if any grass is in your hay fields they will be the wettest. Around here we hove open ditches with water in them around most fields, the closer you are to those areas the more moisture there is too. About the only time we can get in trouble is when we try to bale with stem moisture and get heavy dews, its really hard to get it all right but after time (and mistakes) you can almost never have to check with a meter. Most times you can listen to the balers work and tell what kind of hay moisture its at. 
Your mileage my vary........

tmrand

I agree with all of the comments above. Experience means everything. Forget the meter. I round bale a lot of cane hay which is quite a bit different then alfalfa or grass but dew is a wonderful thing on a dry windrow. It means you can bale for a long period of time and make perfect hay bales. When they unroll the feed looks dang near like it just came off of the swather. In this situation the meter will read wet or even peg. If you still have stem moisture you can bale with it bone dry outside and tear up all of the leaves doing a terrible job but the bale will still rot. In this last condition I explained the meter will read dry or just right. EDIT I will confess that I farm in a desert like climate here so your mileage may vary. That's just the way it is here and that is why your own experience means everything. We feed a lot of our own hay and that is the best way to learn what you have accomplished while you were baling.

tallgrassneil

West Texas

I've baled during a drizzle more than once, as long as the hay was *dry* before it started.

Light dews are ideal for me here in arid west TX, but if water is dripping off, I'll wait a bit for it to dry.

I'll bale anytime the humidity levels are above 50%, but I've learned humidity next to a running center pivot is not the same as the humidity in my carport. :-D

It doesn't reach 50% until early morning, perhaps an hour before sunrise, and then it sorta jumps to 60 or even 70% in a matter of minutes. Then I'm lucky if I can bale until noon. I usually have to quit about 11 AM.
-----
Neil

Hayinhere

Central NE to KS

The moisture is different. You can bale it when the MONITOR says its a little wetter. The monitor is rubbing against the outside of the plant material and responds to dew quickly even if that moisture hasn't penetrated the stem. With dew moisture it takes a lot of dew to raise the moisture of the entire windrow from 10% to 15%. The drier the windrow beforehand, the more dew you can get away with.

This is my (His) best piece of wisdom: 
The higher the sugar content of the hay, the less moisture you can put in the bale.

The net energy on the hay test and the lower fiber values (ADF,NDF) directly correlate with how much moisture is acceptable. If you are baling grass or rained on 2nd cutting alfalfa, you can bale with much higher moisture than 1st or 4th cut alfalfa (with TDN of 72 and RFV of 230 for example) without it leading to heat damage.

Increasing or decreasing humidity levels and time can indicate weather you should be baling or not. Bailing at 55-65% humidity is ideal for me in 4x4 bales of alfalfa IF humidity values were lower than 50% earlier in the day and the hay is dry with high RFV hay.

Things to consider when deciding to bale or not: 
Type of hay x inside stem moisture x sugar content x bale type(density) x storage method x outside humidity expected after stacking x outside humidity at baling time x what the humidity was 10, 20, 30 minutes ago and 1,2,3 hours ago x weather forecast x field size/number of hay acres on the ground that need baling x market for hay x extenuating circumstances.

When considering what bale size/shape/density, and storage method will be used- In terms of what equipment will allow you to put up hay with more dew, I put them in this order: Haystack, round bale, small square bale, med square bale, and last 4x4 bale requiring the driest. Storage methods accounting for airflow, distance from the middle of the bale/stack and the outside and bale density all determine how that hay will continue to dry vs. heat up afterward.

Hank, in Or

Bonanza, Or
Like was said when we bale at night with dew we are sure that the hay was dry before the dew sets in. To give you an example of last night I started baling at 81% RH and was getting 11% on my harvesttec monitor. The 81% RH reading was right on top of 2 16' double raked windrows. It has been dry here with little dew, last night I started baling at 4 am.


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## hay wilson in TX

From Hay Talk Site
http://www.haytalk.com/forums/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=5802

Dew moisture is just on the outside at first.My monitor goes to 30% than just reads WET over that. I can probably go another hour after it reaches 30% with a round baler if the stems were completely dry.If the bale won't come out of the baler it's probably time to stop.LOL 
__________________

We bale on the dew during hot dry spells generally (non this year). We set up to commence baling as the dew starts to set so we get some reference bales on the dry side then we go into the dew and test bales as we feel the dew building. The stopping point is when the tires show shiny black and some leaf starts to stick to the belts (round) or the knots pop (sm square). The bales that are baled on the dew are left in the field for at least one day before picking just to get any surface moisture evaporated.

I do not have any microscopic evidence but it appears that the dew sets on the out side of the hay and is slowly absorbed into the leaf first and then stem when the leaf becomes saturated. That is when they will stick to the belt so you will have stopped before it gets into the stem. You can check this by rolling the leaf (alfalfa, clover, trefoil) between your finger and thumb. 
If it rolls without turning color then you have not picked up too much moisture. As it gets damper you will notice that this test will show the leaf turning darker. 
When it rolls black you are saturated.

We also use this test when determining how close we are getting to baling on a fresh cut ... take from the bottom of the swath.

I have always enjoyed night baling and if one could predict the dew better then that would be the time to make hay. If anyone knows how to predict how the dew will set like how many degrees of temperature drop give rise to a humidity increase, i would appreciate the formula.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

In my part of the country it's possible to bale for awhile once the dew starts to set. Depends a lot on just how dry the hay got during the day and how heavy the dew is of course. Sometimes a person can get the rest of the field baled and only pick up 4-5 points of moisture according to the monitor, other times around here within thirty minutes it will get so tough that I'll start blowing shear bolts out of the baler faster than its worth continuing to try to bale.

If it's the former and the hay goes from 16% up to 20%-22% I've never had a problem having it keep. Once it hits 22% around here and if it keeps rising it tends to accelerate on the moisture its picking up and then the shear bolts start to pop. 
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Another thing I have noticed grass seems to take on dew moisture quicker than straight alf in the evenings.

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## sedurbin

Than you, If I keep hanging around you guys; I may learn something, yet.


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