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Post by Dave-ECIA on Jul 21, 2011 7:34:36 GMT -5
I was a real skeptic of the salt program, put up some very tough alfalfa, salted the crap out of it, beautiful hay when it came out. Cut edge up is the preferred way to stack if using salt. I realized that wet square bales will weight 30lbs more than dry ones. LOL No kidding Ack. We had a dairy farmer that we traded labor with growing up. Seems we always put up "tough" hay down there. Our baler was set to make 50ish pounders, I swear his were 80's. Sucks pulling them out of the barn though. They shrink.  |
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dm479
FFA member
Posts: 78
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Post by dm479 on Jul 21, 2011 15:52:56 GMT -5
You need a forage harvester, quick and simple. What the heck you think he's making the bales for? Those arn't parade wagon benches or roadside art decor. Hee hee hee.  Any of you guys remember an article years ago in one of the farm magazines.... farm journal or farm industry news or similar.. I be damned if I can remember which one.... About a guy that invented a mobile oven to run the hay through to dry it and then be able to immediately bale? I think it was based on the same theory as a microwave oven but don't hold me to that. What I do truly remember about the machine is it was long. Looked like it must of been over 60 feet. It must of been a fake? I sure havn't heard of anyone using machinery made that artificially dries or dehumidifys forage for baling. I really am interested in what happened to that machine and how come it was a flop. From the article ... Like all farm magazine articles printed.... it was the hot stuff. No pun intended. ---------------------Rich the deal you refere to was in FARM SHOW the magizine several years back pull them up in the web type that machine in will proll come up ---------------dave |
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Post by feelnrite on Jul 22, 2011 14:08:29 GMT -5
i remember that article. i'm like you can't remember which magizene it was in but you pulled it behind a tractor and when it came out the other end it was dry. I do remember they said it worked on the same princpiel as your microwave. I saw that in FarmShow magazine. |
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Post by wildhorse on Sept 29, 2011 22:12:49 GMT -5
This is coming from someone who tried to farm hay in a semi-humid climate and now hay farms in the desert: it just isn't practical where there is dew every night: dew bleaching, dew striping, and rain. Rake it again and more rain. Back then, I always wondered how the farmers out west put up such beautiful hay. I thought they must have magical rakes, lol. They don't. Actually they barely work at it.
Out here in the desert SW, I have never heard of the salt technique. But we have high solar irradiation, low humidity, and constant wind -- so drying down hay is no challenge.
We can cut alfalfa one morning, rake the next, and bale the next night at 36 hrs. during the summer months. If the wind is out of the east, we will usually have dew moisture for "case" (is that a term you all use back that way?). If the wind is out of the west, we are SOL and have to spray the hay with a portable spray rig in order to bale.
I read about that oven hay operation, too. No doubt it would turn out awesome hay, but it seemed like there would be awfully high production costs. You transport the hay and moisture out of the field, replace free sunlight with electrically generated light, move the hay through a conveyer system, and at the other end you have hay similar to what we produce out here with little to no effort.
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Post by Dave-ECIA on Oct 2, 2011 7:21:32 GMT -5
Um, yeah. I can only imagine making hay in those conditions. Spraying water on hay prior to baling just made my head explode. Thanks, I'm picking up the parts now......
The closest I have is on some sand ground. It amazes me the difference in drying time between alfalfa on the sand and on my other black dirt. The soil moisture in the black dirt will add almost a day to the cure time.
Really though, isn't striping just cosmetic? Or is there some real nutrient loss because of the bleaching?
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Post by JoshuaGA on Oct 8, 2011 20:03:46 GMT -5
Know the feeling. Perfect, cut, raked, thought, damn, best hay of the season. 150 square bales in, starts raining. I had 50 sold out of the field, other 100 strewn out in my hay shed. Meanwhile, it got down to around 20% today and stopped. Got the neighbor to roundbale it because for sure I would have just snapped bolts in the 846. Moisture checked after we got done, 16 was the lowest and had a 36. Fun fun ugh.
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plove
Hired Hand
Posts: 227
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Post by plove on Oct 8, 2011 21:06:51 GMT -5
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