Posted 9/3/2006 13:53 (#40963) Subject: Speeding hay drying?
Once again we've found ourselves with almost 20 acres of alfalfa hay getting rained on in the windrow that just wasn't quite dry enough to bale last night. This is about the fourth time so far this year we've had hay rained on that was 4-6 hours away from being dry enough to bale. We can still feed the hay to our cows so it's not ruined but that means we are feeding what would have been $120/ton hay to cows that will just as well on $40/ton hay.
We are going to see if we can rent or demo a rotary rake this week to see if it will speed drying over our current bar rakes (had wheel rakes in the past and weren't real impressed with them). Has anybody with a rotary rake seen a noticable difference in drying time over other rakes like the rake manufacturer's claim? The rotary rakes aren't cheap but if they do what they claim I think they would pay for themselves in our operation.
Currently we aren't using a conditioner on our hay but that's going to change for next year. I can see the merit's of running a tedder over the hay after mowing but we'd really like to reduce the number of trips we make over the fields instead of adding another trip with a tedder but if we have to I wouldn't be against doing that.
Speeding hay drying?
