# raking



## adam.yates05 (Jun 9, 2009)

I know this is prolly a funny question for yall but i was just wanting to know if i have to rake before baling?? any help would be useful


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## BCFENCE (Jul 26, 2008)

Well to answer your question, yes it is a funny question (lol) . No seriously it is better to rake than run your baler around the field wearing it out, Its cheaper to wear a rake out plus by raking you can get done quicker by covering more ground with a wide rake and speed, you can rake alot faster than you can bale.
THOMAS


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## C_Evensen (May 27, 2009)

well yea you do... a rotary rake works real good for this...also make sure the grass is dry for dry hay.....Chris.....


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

The there is a general rule about raking hay. 
You do *not* want to rake hay when it is less than 40% moisture.

Using that as a rule, then you can rake shortly after mowing using the moisture in the hay. 
Or you can rake when the humidity is over 90%, under which conditions the hay will again be over 40% moisture. 
Raking when the hay is less than 40% moisture will result in excessive leaves being shattered from the stems. 
This is well pointed out in http://www.wvu.edu/~agexten/pubnwsltr/TRIM/5811.pdf
I rake my hay at first light on the morning of the day before I expect to bale. If I rake the morning I expect to bale the surface dew is folded inside the windrow and this delays the hay being dry enough to bale. Damper than hay raked the previous morning that is. 
I do use this as a tool for when I have more hay to bale than there will be ideal humidity for baling. 
When you loose leaves you are loosing quality feed as well as final total dry matter.

BCFENCE & C_Evensen have very valid points. The question is not IF you need to rake, but during what time frame.

If you are baling when the humidity is below 65% the hay, if fully cured, will be dry enough for small square bales. That is the hay will be in the 18% moisture range. It is no big challenge to loose a high percentage of your leaves at this moisture level.

Every sub climate is it's own little world. Our challenge is to Adopt what Works there to conditions we have Here. Idaho is different than Iowa, which is different than Kentucky, &c.


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

http://utahhay.usu.edu/files/uploads/UHFS07 pdfs for web/Undersander Swathing and Conditioning.pdf

It is mostly an annotated slide presentation. 
You may fine pages 5,6,7,& 8 useful. Plus page 9 though you may wish to change from metric to a USA scale for the pan evaporation. Continuing with page 13 and then page 29 which probably is an answer to your question. Then there is page 38 which is an interesting DA!


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## Grateful11 (Apr 5, 2009)

I just got through raking about 8 acres and the humidity of the hay, Oats, was definitely lower than 40 but the 
relative air humidity was up around 85%. Those are no doubt great numbers to follow but sometimes 
impossible to live by. I'm going to start baling in an hour. Some of windrows are bigger than I wanted, 
I only pulled up 2.5 to 3 swaths but they're still huge, I hope that 448 can feed it in, this will be my 2nd 
time using it.


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

It is interesting to know that oats do not shatter leaves, when the moisture levels is low.

The high Relative Humidity equating to a high moisture content is not my data. The information is from Dan Undersander in Wisconsin. With my rather crude measuring devises the information has proven to be correct, here. In fact he is one of the few University Types that I have heard correlate humidity with hay moisture percentage. Most simply say "Do not rake when the hay is below 40% Moisture!" Very few of them consider humidity. Too much is not good as is too little.

The information is in the links provided.

One reason I am so interested is, HERE we have about three hours of baling between too damp & leaf flying too dry. Not to say people here do not start too early and bale way too late. Most of our custom baler friends show up to rake right after their noon meal, and bale after they finish raking. Here I find I usually need to start baling around 11 am and need to be done by 2 pm. That is if I want avoid mold & to have leaves in the bale at the end of the day.

One caveat is the humidity referred to is down at the wind row not at eye level or the nearest reporting station.

Oats combine right well when the humidity is below 50% at which time, I suppose the oats moisture will be in the 40% range. So I assume it is highly possible to thrash the grain off the plant with a rake. Be easy to know by looking for volunteer oats this fall.

Be easy to see if the moisture is too high for safe storage by looking for heat in a few days and mold when the hay is fed.

The rules are really very simple. It just becomes complicated when we adjust for our micro climate.

There are places where the humidity never is low enough cure hay and if you want hay you have to use forced air drying in the barn. At the same time there are places where the humidity never gets above 50% day or night and that hay is usually raked right behind the mower.


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## Grateful11 (Apr 5, 2009)

My hay today was almost too dry and my windrows were too big & high. I checked the first bale and it 
checked 14.6%. It didn't bale a easily as the the hay I baled the other week. We just got baled in time 
we're having a heck of thunderstorm right now. I got take back the moisture tester I borrowed this 
morning. I did get 56 bales today but I cut the size down tad for the wife she said the first ones were too big.


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## stevemsinger (Jul 8, 2009)

With all that is being said, and it is good information, you need to know that you can bale without raking. It is something that I don't like to do, but with unpredictable weather, I have gone out to the field and baled hay that I would have liked to have raked, but I would rather get it up dry even more.


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## rank (Apr 15, 2009)

Raking the moring before baling and let it sit overnight in a windrow? Only baling between 11:00 and 2:00? Wouldn't that be nice!

Around here, I don't dare leave a windrow over night for fear of a shower requiring me to tedd & rake all over again. Even the dew that the windrow picks up over night will screw things up.

4:00 pm yesterday, with a thunder cloud over my head and the hay at 12%, I told the rake operator not to get more than 1 windrow ahead of me. He was using a wheel rake and travelling at a gentle ~3.5 mph. Were we losing leaves off the red clover, brome, and trefoil? A few I guess. But if it gets rained on in the windrow, it's compost.


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

I have to agree with rank, what the experts say and what actually works for your area/fields/hay type are two different things. Around here if I raked my hay at 40% yesterday, I could take a 3 day weekend and maybe bale it Monday. I'm using a 12 wheel v rake at the moment and maybe a rotary rake would change tht, but personally I can't recall a single person in the area that uses a rotary.

It gets wet enough here at night with the dew that I've seen it take till noon or even 1 o'clock for the dew to burn off then it'll get tough again as soon as seven o'clock, maybe even six o'clock in the later part of August.

A person just has to ignore the experts sometimes and find what works best with their location/equipment/ and hay types.


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## rank (Apr 15, 2009)

mlappin said:


> It gets wet enough here at night with the dew that I've seen it take till noon or even 1 o'clock for the dew to burn off then it'll get tough again as soon as seven o'clock, maybe even six o'clock in the later part of August.


That's the way it is here also. Couple of days ago we had ~ 10 acres raked 2:1 and ready to go but it wasn't quite ready....(maybe 16% at 7pm) so I left it. Next day at 6:00 pm it had more moisture at the bottom of the windrow than it did the day before. I ended up baling anyway, but by now the top was really dry. All I did was lose leaves off the top and use more acid because of the bottom!


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