Tedding Technique

[Tim Harrigan]

@near horse 27914 wrote:

Hi Tim,

Is the increase in fiber actually more fiber being synthesized or is it more likely a matter of the loss/consumption of other components resulting in the fiber content being a larger proportion of the remaining DM?

Another question – since there is some heating as the grass dries down early on, and you do have carbs & proteins etc still available, is there much if any Maillard rxn going on? Or is the temp too low?

Yes, the increase in fiber is from the loss of sugars, starch etc so a proportional change.

Maillard reaction in the field unlikely, temp too low, more likely in storage if heating occurs.

[mitchmaine]

my twenty percent chance of showers turned into a tenth inch of rain this afternoon. after reviewing tims numbers, i find that even tho it hardly shows up in the rain guage, 1/10 inch of rain is 2700 gallons of water, or almost 22,000 lbs water per acre. ouch.
some of that i presume goes into the very dry ground under the hay, but most gets picked up in my making hay.
so now back to george’s quiry, how to tedd this stuff. when you have nothing to loose, experimenting can be fun. so i think i will try raking up my hay next and let the wind through it and see if it dries faster. at this point, the water i’m trying to dry is mostly rainwater, and i think if i leave it lay wide and kick it with a tedder it will draw more water from the ground than if i rake it up and see if it will cure. any thoughts out there?

[jac]

Hey Mitch we have a high rainfall here and I would go for the windrowing it.. it dries the ground quicker and and gives you somewhere to move the hay to…
John

[mitchmaine]

thanks john. i think you are right. i bunched some of yesterdays hay up with the tedder, raked some into windrows and left some be. raked it all up this morning and its hard to tell one bale from the other, except, dinghy as it looks, rained on june hay is far better than perfect august hay. wished i had one more day with it, but forecast is big rain tomorrow. the weather people here aren’t very successful with their forecasts lately.
best wishes, mitch

[near horse]

I tedded most of my down hay today and things went well EXCEPT that the tedder (an old 6 tine kicker) drive was giving me grief. The mechanism for keeping it engaged in gear is a 2″ wide wooden U shaped block that you wedge in place to force the 2 drive cogs together. Tedding is harder on that block than one might think and it wants to pop loose (and disappear into the loose hay) but the worst was when the cogs began to jump past each other (skips) every so often and then more frequently.

So, if anyone has an old kicker tender can you explain or better – add a photo or 2 – of how the drive is engaged/disengaged, could you help me out here? The thing performed its task if not for this issue.

[karl t pfister]

Hay Tim, As you brought up moisture content in the thinking of the field as solar collector post, 80% to 18% ,I know you didn’t say you baled at !8% but the hay preserve companies say you can ? I like to get square bales down to 12%-14% and round bales into the 10% for dust “free” hay, although at that point the leaf shatter is producing its own dust . I do like my moisture meter . It has cut off a day in June ,more than once , we usually don’t get into 2 day hay (1/st cut ) until mid July .And in years like this with so much moisture in the ground and 70 degrees ,the meter doesn’t lie . The art and science of making hay ,thanks for dry hay in the barn on this rainy 3/rd of July .

[Tim Harrigan]

@karl t pfister 27935 wrote:

Hay Tim, As you brought up moisture content in the thinking of the field as solar collector post, 80% to 18% ,I know you didn’t say you baled at !8% but the hay preserve companies say you can ? I like to get square bales down to 12%-14% and round bales into the 10% for dust “free” hay, although at that point the leaf shatter is producing its own dust…

Karl, 18% is pretty safe for square bales, I like to get down to 15 to 16% for large round bales. You can pick up some damp spots in swales, along the tree line etc that are higher though so it is reasonable to get down below 18% if weather allows. You can get up into the lower 20’s with preservatives, it seems like I have seen preservative companies saying or strongly implying that you can bale into the upper 20’s but I think they are over-selling.

[Does’ Leap]

I don’t have a moisture gauge, but we baled some greenish hay last week trying to beat the rain. It was only a couple hundred bales, so I turned them on end in the barn and salted them. I have been checking internal temperature with a probe thermometer and have no heating! Kristan questioned whether the salt on top of the bales was drawing in moisture from the atmosphere or drawing out moisture from the bale.

George

[Carl Russell]

@Does’ Leap 27944 wrote:

I don’t have a moisture gauge, but we baled some greenish hay last week trying to beat the rain. It was only a couple hundred bales, so I turned them on end in the barn and salted them. I have been checking internal temperature with a probe thermometer and have no heating! Kristan questioned whether the salt on top of the bales was drawing in moisture from the atmosphere or drawing out moisture from the bale.

George

“Stack ’em cut side up, so the air can move upward and out of the stem as they het out.” From one farmer I worked for when I was young.

His other lesson was, “you have to make hay in the field, not in the barn”.

In this case it sounds like the hay was pretty much there, but hay that dries in the bale will get dusty even if it doesn’t get hot enough to burn.

The salt absorbs moisture from anywhere, air, and bale, but the way it is typically used is in layers between in the hay, so that it pulls mostly form the hay. If it is just scattered on top, it will probably get more from the air.

[karl t pfister]

Another thing I wondered about are the “new rotary rakes since they only push the hay 5′-6′ is there less roping coiling effect as with
a rollerbar rake which I think slows the air movement thru the winrow. We used to have a Grimm tedder it would fluff up a winrow pretty well,but it kept beating itself to pieces , Do they still make parts for them?
Anybody go to Horse Progress Days and see the latest stuff to dream about ?
Happy 4/th of July !

[Tim Harrigan]

@Carl Russell 27945 wrote:

“you have to make hay in the field, not in the barn”.

That is good advice.

Some heating is not a bad thing because it forces moisture out of the bale. I have never used salt, it seems like it would take a lot to make much of a difference. Maybe it inhibits mold as well.

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