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| Cliff
I'm guessing we're about an hour north of you. Here's what we do.
Day 1 Cut during mid-day. Make swath wide as possible. For us, we cut 9ft and can swath around 7ft. We're using a Case-IH mower/conditioner with Ticorrolls, set as tight as possible.
Day 2 Run tedder across hay and spread as wide as possible. Start tedding around 8am while dew is still on hay
Day 3 Rake with Vermeer wheel rake just as dew is coming off, usually around 9am Rake windrow as wide as possible for pickup on baler, makes the windrow fluffier and gives more surface area exposed to sun and wind. This can vary, if humidity is really high we may let is lay in the windrow on day
three and go to Day 4
Day 4 *only if not dry enough to bale on Day 3* use NH windrow inverter to roll over windrow after dew comes off the top of windrow. This sometimes comes into play in first-cutting hay yeilding 2T/ac or more. As you already know, this year has been a challenge. Our third cutting could have baled late on day two. It was light and the humidity was low/wind high.
The Vermeer rake seems to give us a really nice fluffy windrow. Better than some other wheel rakes we have used. Not really sure why, haven't taken the time to find out why, it just does. I know some around here that use rotary rakes and swear by them, but it doesn't look like a good fit for our operation.
We don't use acid, have never really felt it was necessary. We do use innoculant and feel that helps bale at slightly higher moisture, but more importantly gives us hay that stores better. Less weight loss and keeps green color longer.
The breakthrough for us was the tedder. It flips the hay around and increases the area of hay exposed to sun. It takes the hay on the bottom of the windrow that would not have cured in our old system and spreads it out so the sun can get to it. I don't see any significant leaf loss when we run the tedder with the hay still wet and the dew still on the hay.
Hope this helps. Sounds like it's similar to some other suggestions here.
Dave
Edited by Dave-ECIA 9/5/2006 10:35
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Speeding hay drying?
