Haying trials and tribulations.

[SADIE]

good reading thread. To those of you in the drought area of the Peace River---hearts go out to you as we all know it drought usually makes its rounds.

Cut pit silage--great way top put up feed, regrowth etc. In our area had custom done for a few years---but herds much smaller or diminishing--no work to keep crews going.

My haying because of knowledge from hay under irrigation. You have to have 4 pieces of equipment in the field.

1)haybine 2)inverter 3)baler, 4)picker. Depending on weather, temp, dew etch I often been on each piece for that day---never bored.

[grassfarmer]

Yes and no on the distance thing Kato - I bet you haul your hay home from the rented land 10 miles away. By the same token you could be hauling high dry matter silage in bales either in summer to wrap at home or to wrap in situ and haul in winter if you have more time there. All that might have to change is the time at which/in which you haul the product. Sure there is a cost to plastic but in my experience it could be the difference between feeding hay grain to yearlings or taking them through on straight silage. There are lots of ways to pencil these things out and every situation is different. I know I will never let grass spoil again in the pursuit of hay making.

[smcgrath76]

I think silage is a great option for
some but we don't do it. Lots of
reasons here...
Cost and high cash demands to put it
up...
Labour and winter feeding demands to
feed it out.
Land base mix of forage, anuuals,
perennials, native, tame, etc.
For the amount of feeding that we do
(very limited) the investment in silage
does not pencil out.

[burnt]

Another probable benefit from wrapping might be less leaf loss at both baling and feeding times.

There is definitely less shatter when baling higher moisture and again when we unroll bales on the snow during winter feeding.

The only thing I do not like about feeding on the snow is seeing the fines on the ground come spring. I know it isn't very much compared to what they eat and what we save in bedding costs by feeding in the field, but it is mostly the alfalfa leaf fragments that comprise the wastage.

So, it would seem that there should be a considerable savings in feed value by baling high moisture hay. Not sure how one would establish a value for that. It would not likely be all that high, but might offset the wrapping costs a bit.

[coppertop]

Another 1/2" of rain in the night here
in west central AB. Nice loud thunder
storm along with it. The rain is patchy
lately, this is the first rain we have
had n over a week, where other areas are
getting rain almost every evening.
Bail and silage wrap are getting more
difficult all the time to landfil. Our
County had to make special arrangements
with the local landfill to accept the
stuff. One farmer had shown up with a
truck full and was turned away and told
to go home and wash the stuff before
they would accept it.
The Ag Service Board got involved and we
were finally given PHONE assurance that
silage wrap, bale wrap and twine would
be accepted but as of yet we have had
nothing in writing from the landfill
contract operator.

[burnt]

Our local dump takes it at no charge and from there it goes to recycle. They do want it to be clean and trying to keep it out of the mud and manure is a small price to pay for being able to get rid of it that easily.

[kato]

I don't know an awful lot about this haylage business, so I have a couple of questions. I assume you wrap your bales individually? How do you move them without putting a hole in the plastic? How much do they weigh compared to a dry bale? Are they hard on front end of the the tractor when you're feeding?

Around here it normally gets put into long bags holding a lot of bales. So you either have to haul it home immediately, or leave long rows of wrapped bales out in the field. Manpower becomes a big issue either way.

Yes we do haul our bales home, twenty three at a time on a semi flatbed with a converter pulled by the tractor. I would imagine wet bales would make a pretty heavy load, and it's downhill pretty much all the way. Could be quite a ride! LOL

[burnt]

We make a 4'x5' bale so they are not too heavy for our TN85A N.H. Unless I try to take 2 at a time. And of course I have to try . . .

I can see how you guys with the 5x6 bales would need a bigger tractor. It also depends on the moisture level when baling. Cut one day and bale the next makes for awfully heavy bales and I have seen it go kinda sour if baled too green.

While some do wrap individually, I get ours wrapped in a tube because it's cheaper. Still costs plenty at $6.25 to $7.10 a bale. But if we wouldn't have wrapped so much this year we would have mostly black hay.

Once a tube is opened it will start to spoil fairly quickly (a couple of days)in warm weather but in the winter it will keep for a few days longer before it starts to heat and spoil.

Wrapping is not cheap but it guarantees quality and relieves a lot of stress in haying season. Especially this year when we hardly get 3 good days in a row, not to mention 5 like we need to cure dry hay.

[burnt]

Sorry, I cannot tell you what they weigh. It will obviously vary with the moisture. My dry bales run about 850 to 950 depending on the mix.

The last stuff we wrapped last week was fairly mature 2nd cut that only needed about 4 or 5 more hours of sun so it was almost dry hay. But we didn't get the needed sun the next day so I was glad that it was wrapped since it had already lain for a week in muggy, hazy weather.

I could carry two at once on the bale fork and the back end wasn't too light.

[grassfarmer]

Kato, most of the silage balers in the old country make something like 4.5 x 4.5 feet bales. We averaged about 1100lbs on good dry haylage but sometimes we baled wet green stuff - i've seen us with bales that the water was actually running out of! Hate to think how much some weighed. We used to cut one day, miss the next and bale on the third.
The original method of storage there was individual bags and we must have been the last people still using them. They were way cheaper than wrapping plus you didn't need a wrapper. We also reused a lot of the bags which really cut the costs. Our system was to haul as soon as they were baled and get them all bagged and tied in a short day. If the baler started at 9am we could clear a 10 acre field (150 bales) by around 2pm with a 1 mile haul. Two men with loader tractors and wagons and occasional help from a retired man tying bags. The prices we paid were @ $1.50 bag or @ $4.80 to have someone come in and custom wrap them, albeit that was a decade ago now. I would never pierce wrapped bales - there are a number of loader attachments that handle wrapped bales.
I have the luxury now of a Hutterite custom team right next door so it's all pit silage now. Can't beat them pulling into the field in the morning with a $million of machinery and pulling out again at night with the job done. It usually costs us under $10 a ton for swathing, chopping, hauling and packing and they also weigh a % of loads over their scale so we get an idea of yield.

[kato]

We used to get the local Hutterites to combine for us back when we grew a bit of grain. It was an impressive sight. We only had a couple of hundred acres of crop, and they'd pull in with six big combines, grain wagons, and a semi. I don't know why they didn't run into each other in the dust. They'd be done in a couple of hours.

As for the sileage thing, a 16 tonne an acre corn crop, over 75 acres, which is what we had last year would be $12,000.00. I'm not sure what the tonnage on hay sileage per acre is though.

Mmmm.... our baler only cost us $2500.00. It's been running for four years on salvaged parts from the old baler. And the cows process our corn for free. Our hay trailer and converter were less than $3000.00, and the fuel we use hauling the hay home is about what we'd use feeding sileage bales all winter.

As well, it's a one man in the field operation here. No hired help, and our second tractor is not big enough to do work as heavy as tractor #1 is. All we use it for is rowing bales up for the rack.

So I guess we will just keep on being aggravated, and eventually get the job done. It always does, even though some days it seems like it will never be finished. I suppose the lesson here is that every operation has to develop what works best for them. And no two will be alike.

[Kathy]

"I suppose the lesson here is that every operation
has to develop what works best for them. And no
two will be alike." kato

Wasn't that the point of Ag Minister Hayden's joke?
No three ranchers operate the same (can agree), so
we'll get rid of two of the ranchers and deal with
the one that remains, so long as he operates they
way we tell him/her to.

Freudian slip! Whoops.

[kato]

Ah, but they can agree to disagree. LOL I have a feeling he wasn't talking about methods of putting up feed though. ;-)

[T.N.T.]

I'm like you Kato,and sick and tired of trying to put up this years hay crop.Got another 3"s of rain this weekend.People on here saying you got to listen to the weather forecast,you got to have an inverter.I did listen to the weather and i have given up on them because they are always wrong.I do have an inverter,got a 14 wheel v rake,got 2 round balers,and still can't get much decent hay put up.I sure got a lot of black shit in bales though,but not much good hay to mix with it.Checked some standing lodged hay today,and it's all rotting now from all the rain.I am sick and tired of this year already,can't wait until it's time to start harvest.It's going to be so much fun trying to get the combines out of the mud,after there stuck.I think i better go have a couple of shots of rye now,before i go postal!!

[T.N.T.]

Gone from having a bumper hay crop,to now having to buy feed or sell some cows.