How’s the hay?

[Lane Linnenkohl]

I brought the last load of first cutting hay home Friday. A very wet June held me up some. My home field is nearly ready to cut again. How’s haying going elsewhere?

[karl t pfister]

Yeah not an easy year to hay especially compared to last ,when the weather seemed to come from Camelot, just the right amount at just the right time. However this year too much rain too hard ,it seems as though we are just getting out of the Spring pattern of slower to clear from storm fronts and the highs not lasting and not as high, but this last 4 days has been great.
We have 14 acres to go on 2 pieces ,and our 2/nd crop is certainly not burning up from lack of moisture .
Happy Haying !

[Big Horses]

Still looking at 6″ to a foot of water on most of our meadows….guess we’ll be a couple more weeks out before we start.
John

[jac]

Just as wet over here guy’s..mind you John we havent had 6″ of water yet !!! mega dry May and a soaking in June and July led to some dodgy hay to say the least. The Timothy hay up country is still to be cut and has turned dead on its feet…
John

[mink]

lane out of curiousity how much hay would be on that wagon of loose hay if it were baled into 40 pound bales? mink

[Lane Linnenkohl]

@mink 28217 wrote:

lane out of curiousity how much hay would be on that wagon of loose hay if it were baled into 40 pound bales? mink

I wish I knew, because you aren’t the first to ask a similar question. I was just thinking yesterday that someone somewhere has to have a density figure for loose hay that can be used to determine tons of hay in a given area.

[Anonymous]

Talking to an Amish friend who loads loose hay then bales it into the barn a 7 foot by 16 foot wagon with a good load you should get about 60 40 lb bales

[drafthorsey]

Well I’ve never seen anything like this, even the doggone Farmer’s Almanac was off …. moved to Oklahoma in 1980 and suffered the longest heat wave they’d had and we’re breaking those records in 2011. Even putting some distance on the bad drought of ’97 and ’98 which hit my place really hard. I cut my hay the last week of May and got a paltry return for my efforts. Not even half the tonnage of the year before. It’s late August and the hay hasn’t come up that cutting more than boot high. It’s brown and wirey as can be. Crunches under your boot.

Trailer trucks are racing up and down I-35 with hay. Wonder what the cost of fuel is doing to the cost of hay. First folks were selling off their livestock as they had no hay. Now they’re selling as there’s no water, farm ponds are drying up. Actually went to a cattle auction where the auctioneer held things up and asked if any of us would put a bid in on this pen of cattle? Rancher stepped up to the mic and said he couldn’t take ’em back home as he’d run out of water. These are good herds of cattle and it hurts to see these men sell, or need to sell off what they put their pride into. To these farmers and ranchers credit, they’re still putting some good lookin’ beef through the chutes…. water, hay …. or not.

Talkin’ with my neighbor over the fence this past Thursday. He tells me its’ much much worse south and west of Houston, Texas where I’d imagine they deal with a lot less rain in a good year than most of us do. Georgia and Alabama have been in a long drought they’re finally pulling out of we guess. Kansas is hit hard too. The corn looks like it’s mid – December and somebody was to lazy to cut it. Dry, brown, withered stalks just standing there in rows.

Hope the rest of you might be wondering if you ought to hook up the team and try for a third cutting. Hope the rest of you are wondering if you did, where you’d put the extra hay. Wouldn’t wish this on anybody. So kiss a few of the first bales you put up for us down here this August if the harvest is good. Ain’t complaining. We’ll get through this, nothing a little rain won’t cure…

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