[Tim Harrigan]

Do you have a plan B if there is not haying window in October?

[Tim Harrigan]

near horse;20830 wrote:

Hi Mitch,

…it’s 8′ wide and that makes me question whether I can use it w/ just my pair…

If you are not in a hurry I encourage you to wait for a 6 footer. You know your ground though, maybe it will be fine. I would rather have enough zip to go around the field a few more times than have to nurse them through it because it is a little too much. Its like stacking bales. Its not the first 400 that are a problem, it is the last 50.

[Tim Harrigan]

OK, I was sidetracked by the HD, I pictured a heavy duty tandem disk, but I see you also wrote single presumably meaning single gang. In that case my guess is a 2-3 horse disk depending on gang angle and soil conditions and added weight.

[Tim Harrigan]

My first reaction is a 4+ horse disk if you want to work right along. This is a heavy duty, tandem disk built for a tractor? We visited single disk draft some time ago in this thread. For a tandem disk the pulling force is proportional to the weight of the disk, like most things. At a typical working depth the draft (lbs-force) on a clay soil would be about 1.5 times the weight (lbs) of the disk, 1.2 * weight on a silt loam and 0.8 times on a sandy loam. So if your disk goes about 200 lb/foot or 1600 lbs my starting guess for draft would be about 2400 lbf in clay soil, 1920 lbf in silt loam and 1280 lbf in sandy loam. If you want to test your team, hitch on to a 6000 lb stoneboat to estimate the clay soil, 4800 lb stoneboat for the silt loam and 3200 lb boat for the sandy loam. Those could easily be +-30%.

http://www.draftanimalpower.com/showthread.php?t=3226&highlight=disk

[Tim Harrigan]

Looks like the timing is good with the rain. Those oats and turnips will jump. How wide is the swath with that spreader?

[Tim Harrigan]

Does’ Leap;20702 wrote:

Tim, there is no adjustment on my John Deere rake (that I can see, at least), that governs pitch.
George

OK, the rakes I have used have had pitch adjustments. Not all do. That ties your hands a bit. Donn, it probably does not make a real fluffy windrow, but tilt it back and you will see it make a much tighter windrow. There are times when you actually want to slow it down a bit.

[Tim Harrigan]

near horse;20692 wrote:

I still have to ask about what you’re cutting that “leaf shatter” is a concern? You all are making alfalfa hay? (I did notice that Donn mentioned clover).

If I remember right, there’s an article in “Hay and Forage Grower” this month that swears that 1/2″ of rain won’t hurt your down hay at all and really swear that the curse is letting your hay get even a little over-ripe.

Leaf shatter is more of a concern with alfalfa than with grass hay, but it is still a concern, particularly with hay that is down below 40% moisture. The other important consideration when haying with drafts is how you use your time and energy.

One thing you have to ask yourself about different operations or new information is does it make sense? Does it make sense that 1/2 inch of rain will not hurt your hay? Maybe if it rains almost immediately after it is cut, but generally it does not make practical sense based on my experience. Usually it rains later in the drying cycle because not many folks start cutting when there is rain on the horizon. If you are feeding high producing dairy cattle hay maturity at harvest is very important because of hay quality and feeding issues. But for feeding horses, oxen, beef cattle etc. there are good reasons to have other things higher on your priority list.

I have not seen the articles you are referring to. I do know, though, that many times journalists are more interested in telling a good story than getting the story straight. It is not uncommon for them to overemphasize a small part of the farming system to create a good story, even if it does not make practical sense in the big picture. They have a magazine to sell and not all of them seek approval from the researcher regarding the specific presentation of the content before they print it.

[Tim Harrigan]

I am referring to the tooth pitch. A forward pitch gives more lift and makes a loose, fluffy windrow. A backward pitch makes a tighter windrow that dries slower. Picture a 3-pt mounted rake. If you extend the top link you will increase forward pitch. If you shorten it you will increase backward pitch. Some bar rakes have caster wheels that adjust pitch. I have one with three hand cranks, two adjust and level height, one adjusts pitch. The teeth should be level side to side, usually just below the top of the stubble, one or two inches above the ground.

[Tim Harrigan]

If you do not have any topsoil you do not have much fertility or biological activity. Fast draining sounds like no water holding capacity. A few years of cover crops etc. will not do much in those conditions. Maybe you should haul in several inches of topsoil if this is the only location you have available.

[Tim Harrigan]

Does’ Leap;20654 wrote:

A question about your attachment: all the folks I’ve talked to locally always tedd only when the dew is off. Your powerpoint suggests the opposite. Can you expand on that?
George

I think the key point is as Theloggerswife said “We have found what works for us best is to run the tedder right after mowing the hay. It causes less leaf damage and the hay is spread out, right from the beginning to expedite drying. We rake it over once, let it dry and then bale it up.”

Rotary tedders are useful tools for speeding drying but they do damage the hay by causing leaf shatter and dry matter loss. The drier the hay is, the greater the loss. When the hay is first cut, it is tough and most resistant to these losses. Similarly, when it is cut in the afternoon and tedded the next morning under dew it is still tough from absorbing water. So tedding under dew is a chance to minimize shatter loss yet fluff and aerate the swath for sun penetration and air movement. My rule-of-thumb is if it is dusty when you are tedding it is too dry.

I will attach a summary of typical hay dry matter losses for harvest, storage and feeding. You will see that typical tedding losses range up to 8% of the crop per operation. If the hay is quite dry, that number can be quite a bit higher. The numbers point out that there is a cost for handling hay. Of course, you have to do it so the challenge is to create the fastest drying with the least possible handling. Typical losses from cutting through feeding are about 20%. Add in a little rain and round bales stored outside and those losses can be in the 40% to 50% range. It seems unbelievable because other than rain damage loss they occur as not overly noticeable losses with every step. But these leaks add up.

George, you probably know that side delivery rakes can be adjusted by tilting the rake. If you tilt it down it will rope the windrow. If you tilt it back it kicks the hay up a bit and makes a more open windrow. Of course, if you rake multiple times even with it tilted back you will have a tight windrow resistant to air movement and sun penetration. I think you have a fluffer-type tedder. I have not used one over a side-delivery windrow, but it seems to me that you could open up a windrow with that tedder more effectively than a second raking. I would be much less reluctant to use that type of tedder more than one time or later in the drying cycle than I would a rotary tedder. Losses are lower with the fluffer tedders.

If you look at the progression of losses in hay harvesting I think it shows a good justification for managed grazing. Certainly there are losses from selective grazing and manure deposition with grazing, but it is not like it is compared to zero losses with hay harvest.

[Tim Harrigan]

Be careful here Donn, Andy will invent a third hand and clean up in this competition.:eek:

[Tim Harrigan]

Countymouse;20502 wrote:

…..Question: How far does N migrate in soil? It might be that it’s mostly trapped… If the clover is several inches away from the corn, can it still make a sizeable contribution?

Maybe the roots of the legume would spread underground to the roots of the corn… Maybe that would help fix N or maybe it would compete with the corn for water or nutrients… Alternatively, if the clover is mowed and the residue deposited on the corn, that would seem to deposit the nitrogen….

Slow response, I needed a reference book for this. Chap 9 in: Forages, the science of grassland agriculture. Vol II. Barnes et al., Eds.

A plow down legume cover crop would be a little different than what you are describing, I think a perennial legume grass mixture in a pasture or hay field might be a better fit. 3 conditions are needed for high N2 fixation in mixed forage stands: 1) high forage yield, 2) > 50% legume in the mixture, and 3) high reliance of the legume on N2 fixation.

N is transferred from legumes by 1) exudation and leakage of N from roots and nodules, 2) senescence and degradation of nodules or roots, 3) direct transfer from legume roots through connections made by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal hyphae, 4) ammonia loss from legume herbage and reabsorbtion by grass herbage, 5) movement of N from legume herbage to the soil by leaching or decomposition of surface litter, 6) manure. The two most important are the decomposition of above and below ground plant material and livestock manure cycling.

Transfer of N increases with stand age in perennial forage mixtures because of the greater reliance of the legume on N2 fixation and the cumulative decomposition of plant tissue. Maximum N transfer from alfalfa to bromegrass was about 60 lb N/acre-year and from white clover to perennial ryegrass was about 50 lb N/acre-year.

Plow down legume cover crops can provide more N because of the rapid decomposition of the entire plant.

[Tim Harrigan]

Theloggerswife;20625 wrote:

We have found what works for us best is to run the tedder right after mowing the hay. It causes less leaf damage and the hay is spread out, right from the beginning to expedite drying. We rake it over once, let it dry and then bale it up.

I do have to say that even though we have had plenty of heat lately, it has taken us an extra day of drying due to the humidity. But, we don’t take any extras steps. We just leave it tedded out for an extra day. The last 15 acre piece we mowed/tedded it out on Thursday and did not bale it up until Monday.

I think this is an excellent, practical approach. The weather dries the crop, not the machine. Once you ted the crop once, unless something happens to flatten it out so air movement in not effective, the added value from another tedding will usually be greatly diminished compared to the first tedding. And, if the humidity is high or the crop is shaded along a tree line the mechanical manipulation alone is not going to do much.

I am a proponent of doing the least amount of manipulation possible to put up good quality hay. That will change from first to second and third cut and from one year to the next. The reward is better hay and less work. I am also a proponent of in-field comparisons that are not overly complicated and reveal valuable information about what is really going on. It is not too hard to ted some windrows and leave others wide and rake later, bale what is ready and get the other a little later. It is important to farm smart with draft animals. Maybe you are already, maybe there is room for improvement.

I am a cautious proponent of the tedder. Right after mowing a heavy first cutting, shake the dew off a late first day cutting on the second day, wake up a matted down rained on crop. Lighter crops or late in the drying cycle the value not so clear cut because the tedding also damages the hay. I have heard some lofty claims of how fast the tedder will dry the hay, but in the work I described earlier and other work when the measurements are side-by-side the faster drying is usually a couple of hours to a half day, maybe a day in a heavy first cutting. I think it is important to avoid whole-field comparisons where the big difference might be the weather, not the tedder or rake. “Last year it took 6 days to dry down and this year I used a tedder and it only took 3 days…..” type of thing.

[Tim Harrigan]

Nice. You are right, if you had 2 half-length rollers side-by-side the inside one could roll backwards on a tight turn and it would pivot real nice. When do you sleep?

[Tim Harrigan]

This post by George and an earlier hay drying discussion make me think of some earlier work that I did with Dr. Alan Rotz on comparing hay drying strategies. He was previously at MSU but is now at State College PA with the USDA pasture group. He is probably the #1 authority in North America on hay drying technologies so it was great having the opportunity to work with him. I am attaching a pdf file of a presentation on rapid hay drying that I gave at a meeting put on by the Michigan Hay and Grazing Council in 2008. It includes some general discussion of hay drying but the part that is most interesting is the graphs near the end that directly compare hay drying rates.

The graphs track the drying rate of the hay in two drying trials that we did during one of our farm shows. The crop was a second cut alfalfa yielding 2.25 ton/acre dry matter, a pretty good second cutting. We compared (1)hay cut and layed in a wide swath (haybine) and then raked before baling at about 30% moisture, (2) hay cut and layed in a narrow swath and left alone until ready for baling, (3) hay cut and layed in a wide swath, tedded and they raked for baling, and (4) hay cut and layed in a narrow swath, then inverted with a windrow turner (30% moisture) for baling. In trial 1 there was 4/10 inch of rain during the night after the first day. Trial 2 started on the second day and did not receive any rain. In this trial all the hay was mechanically conditioned, raking was with a rotary rake and tedding was with a rotary tedder. We collected and dried hay samples from the windrow immediately after cutting and then every 2 hours during the day until the hay was dry enough for baling.

Before I explain the results of that work I want to say a few things about page 10 of the pdf which compares expected, average drying rates for cuts 1-3 of alfalfa with different drying strategies. These are averages that include a wide range of conditions including years that have rain so the results are relative to each other. Central Michigan conditions, second cutting is usually mid-July, we are influenced by the Great Lakes so clouds and high humidity are common, 105 day corn is pretty typical. Probably the most relavant for animal draft haying is the first method on the far left of the horizontal axis, Sickle bar, Full Swath, Rake and the third method from the left, Mechancal condition, Wide Swath, Rake. This indicates that the relative advantage of mechanical conditioning alfalfa hay is big in cut one (<5 days vs 8 days), less advantage in cut 2 (<4 days vs 5.5 days) and no advantage in cut 3.

On page 12 is the graph of Trial 1. The blue vertical bar indicates rain during the night. The horizontal line at 68% moisture indicates when each method was dry enough for haylage harvest, the horizontal line at 18% indicates when each was dry enough for baling. There are thick, vertical, colored lines that indicate when certain operations were done. For instance, the hay was cut at 9 am on day one and tedding was done about 11:30 am. On day 2 after the rain the crop was tedded again at 9 am, the raking and inverting were done a little later at 1 pm after the top of the swath had dried.

The narrow, colored, vertical lines indicate when each method was at a moisture suitable for harvest. For baleage harvest at 68% moisture the tedded hay was ready for baleage harvest by 1 pm on day 1, the wide swath raked about 2:45, narrow swath inverted about 3:15 and the untouched narrow swath at 4:45.

There was considerable re-wetting over night from the rain. By 5 pm the tedded hay was <30%, the inverted narrow swath about 38%, wide swath raked about 45% and the untouched wide swath about 55%.

On day 3 the tedded and raked hay was ready at 11 am, the other method were ready at 1 pm.

In trial 2 the drying conditions were better, lower humidity, drier air with a good breeze. Little difference between methods, every method was ready for chopping around 1 pm. On day 2 the inverted narrow swath was ready for baling at 1 pm, tedded hay about 2pm, wide swath raked about 2:45, untouched narrow swath at 5 pm.

So I guess the bottom line is weather has a huge effect on drying, mechanical manipulation has some effect but not as great as is would seem. The tool does not dry the hay, but it can create conditions that make drying from sun, wind etc more efficient. The trade-off is in the human and animal energy cost of the operation and in the hay dry matter loss that occurs with every mechanical manipulation of the crop, particularly as the hay approaches baling moisture and is brittle. The leaves are what is lost, and that is the best part of the feed value. So the weather is pretty important. If there is not rain in the forcast the regret for leaving the hay in the field 6 days rather than 5 is pretty small. But if cutting 1/2 or 1 day off the drying time saves the hay from a rain event the value is pretty big.

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