# Stem moisture compared to external moisture



## JD3430 (Jan 1, 2012)

I have hay down since last Thursday. Real thin, fine angel hair type grass, no thick stems. Since then, Weather has been all over the place. When cut last week, it was cool, cloudy. Last 2 days hot and somewhat humid. 1 period of rain 3 days ago for about 2 minutes. After tedding for last 3 days I finally raked and made a bale on Sunday. 25% crap. Unrolled bale and Tedded it out. 
Tuesday, on the doorstep of Wednesday night (tonights) rain, I baled again. Bales reading between 17-20%. Looks like hay is wicking moisture off the ground underneath. 
Hay is basically tan. Not much green color left. Looks dry, but stems resist breaking in twist test a little more than I usually see after 6 days of drying. 
I THINK this higher- moisture-than- I -like downed hay has external moisture due to higher humidity and ground humidity, but as has been said, sometimes you have bale when Mother Nature forces you to. 
So my question is, is external moisture any less troublesome than internal stem moisture? Will 17-20 "external moisture" hay end up with mold? I see a lot of guys bale with dew to actually keep the hay soft.


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## Teslan (Aug 20, 2011)

I would never bale my kind of grass hay with dew on it. Or wet. It gets what we call tough. It might not mold, but when it is "tough" it tends to break knots, shear pins and the like. For me the only time to really bale grass hay is when the sun is bright and shiney.


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## bensbales (Jul 18, 2011)

I would say that external moisture is less troublesome then stem moisture because stem moisture will raise moisture levels in a bale for a few days while external moisture will stay the same as you baled it. Dew moisture seems to sweat off easyer than stem moisture. The few times i have baled hay with the dew, the hay was too dry to bale that afternoon so i waited for the dew, the last load of the evening my probe said the hay was 18% and kept fine i was making small square.


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

It's really hard to pinpoint your problem given what a horrible year it's been to make hay.

I've used my tedder more this year than in the last two.

Making the light ground has been a real joy, the lower spots actually have some really nice high yielding mix, the grass all but gave up on the higher spots and the alfalfa was stunted from the lack of rain the last 5 weeks or so. I've been baling when the low spots are ready, the high spots are already too dry at the crack of dawn from the lack of any real dew at night.


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## FarmerCline (Oct 12, 2011)

It really surprises me that that hay is not well done yet. About how many bales per acre do you think it is? I cut some second cut hay a week ago(about 50 bales per acre)and baled 48 hours after cutting and it was really too dry that afternoon. The grass would just about shatter when you touched it and the bales were really light...I had the pressure cranked way up but I still could not get the weigh I was wanting and I was having to put a lot of hay in the bales due to the pressure being cranked up to try to get a heavy bale. So I did something I have never done before....I decided to wait and let the dew fall that evening to add some moisture back to the hay before baling. This would have worked well except for the fact I almost waited too long before resuming to bale and I though I had let the hay pick up too much moisture as it felt damp. I turned the pressure off and still had a 60 pound bale but I decided to go ahead and bale and see what happens. It has been 6 days now since I baled and the hay has not heated up at all...the bales did lose a little weight but I have a almost perfect bale weight now and the bales are still nice and firm and the hay is nice....not overly dry and brittle kind of "soft". From this experience I think that if the hay is completely cured that baling with dew moisture to a certain extent is not going to make the bales spoil like green uncured hay would. I did have one bale that was baled earlier in the day that was under some trees that I knew was green so I threw aside...it had heated up by the next morning but never really got hot and is starting to cool down now and has not molded.

I don't mean to confuse you but the twist test had not been working for me...it seems when the stems get to a certain point of being dry they don't want to break anymore as I had some first cut grass that I knew was dry and went ahead and baled it even though the stems would not break when twisted and it did not even go through a sweat. I don't really dont know, maybe I was doing it wrong.


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## JD3430 (Jan 1, 2012)

Well I waited a little longer today but with front moving thru, it was now or never. 92 degrees today. Partly sunny and fairly humid. 
I baled up 63 4x5 biscuits. 
53 read 18% moisture almost as a constant. I swear, it looked like broom straw. Brown, bleached out and just plain nasty. Didnt see more than 2 or 3 small wet slugs. To my amazement, 18% was the most common number on the harvest Tec screen. Some was 17% and a little was 19%. 
Had a wet area that can never be dry enough to make dry hay. Made 10 25% bales that'll end up mushroom hay.

I've never had hay on the ground for 6-7 days with rain only 2-3 minutes in partly cloudy weather that would not dry enough to make quality hay.


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## Tim/South (Dec 12, 2011)

> 53 read 18% moisture almost as a constant. I swear, it looked like broom straw. Brown, bleached out and just plain nasty.


This is why these discussions and experiences are valuable to me. Probably to others as well who read but never join as members.

We had a nice long window 2 weeks ago. I cut and rolled 72 bales of Bahia, no problem. Tedded once and rolled it on day three. Moisture was 15% -16%. Nice hot cooking sunshine.

Set up at the next place, 30 acres of mixed grasses with a lot of foxtail. Cut on Tuesday, tedded Wednesday. Thursday it felt good but gave it another day. No rain in sight so let it lay. Friday the hay felt great. The foxtail stems felt light.

Rolled a few and checked the moisture. Lower readings were 30%, high rolls were 40% on the probe.

Felt the hay again. Light weight, bleached and brown, no dew.

Finished rolling, got 137 rolls and hauled them straight to the barn. Not one heated up. The rolls looked like wheat straw.

I now am convinced the hand held moisture reading gizmos are very inconsistent and vary greatly between grasses.


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## JD3430 (Jan 1, 2012)

Tim/South said:


> This is why these discussions and experiences are valuable to me. Probably to others as well who read but never join as members.
> We had a nice long window 2 weeks ago. I cut and rolled 72 bales of Bahia, no problem. Tedded once and rolled it on day three. Moisture was 15% -16%. Nice hot cooking sunshine.
> Set up at the next place, 30 acres of mixed grasses with a lot of foxtail. Cut on Tuesday, tedded Wednesday. Thursday it felt good but gave it another day. No rain in sight so let it lay. Friday the hay felt great. The foxtail stems felt light.
> Rolled a few and checked the moisture. Lower readings were 30%, high rolls were 40% on the probe.
> ...


Hmmmm, foxtail, huh????
This is really weird but I had a lot of foxtail, too. I've had 2 fields with it and both were a major PITA to get dried down. Rolls were baled from 18-25%, but none of mine heated, either. Fields right next door with no foxtail were baled in 3 days. Foxtail fields took 6 days and still had high readings. 
I'm wondering if the stems are so fine they don't get cracked by rollers or foxtail has some other troublesome attribute that keeps it from drying down??


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## Bob M (Feb 11, 2012)

I had the same problem JD , we baled 100 ac yesterday that had been down for 5 or 6 days depending on field. We big baled and wrapped all of it. This year for us it seems like the grasses and not just the fall grass is causing the problem. Seems like in the middle of a sunny day grass hay over 18% with perservative has been heating on us.


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## endrow (Dec 15, 2011)

JD3430 said:


> Well I waited a little longer today but with front moving thru, it was now or never. 92 degrees today. Partly sunny and fairly humid.
> I baled up 63 4x5 biscuits.
> 53 read 18% moisture almost as a constant. I swear, it looked like broom straw. Brown, bleached out and just plain nasty. Didnt see more than 2 or 3 small wet slugs. To my amazement, 18% was the most common number on the harvest Tec screen. Some was 17% and a little was 19%.
> Had a wet area that can never be dry enough to make dry hay. Made 10 25% bales that'll end up mushroom hay.
> ...


 HOW much crop saver acid did you use


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## JD3430 (Jan 1, 2012)

endrow said:


> HOW much crop saver acid did you use


None. Barn is stuffed full of hay. Didnt want to use preservative on hay that's going to be tarped outside. 
Otherwise I would have used it.


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