Hay Season
Weather controls the farmer, in this time of the year. If the conditions are good and acceptable, we will mow our brome fields and prairie pastures with a hay swather. Basically a swather works like this, first it cuts the grass at the low side of the stem. Then the swather crimps the stem of the grass, and drops it out the back in a swath or windrow.
Raking hay is a great way to cut down the amount of time you spend baling and the gas you use. It also speeds up the drying process by half, because what a rake does to a windrow or swath is flip it. If you leave the hay to dry on one side to dry in a hot day and flip it that night and leave it out for another day then the hay in the rows are completely dry. Raking hay is also used for moving two windrows together so the baler can save a trip or two around the field.
We let the hay dry out for at least two good days of sunshine. Once the hay is dry. Most farmers hay their bales into big round bales, others prefer small square bales that are easier to move around. Our choice we use a John Deere big round baler. Metal rods called teeth will glide across the ground picking up the windrows, then it rolls the hay in a circular motion inside till the bale is the size you want. We roll ours till the bales are five foot tall an five feet wide. Different balers use twine or net wrap to keep the bales from falling apart when there kicked out of the baler, ours is equipped with net wrap which we prefer but also offers twine too if we needed it.
When we are done baling all of our hay we leave the bales in the fields for a couple weeks. After that we haul it home with a truck and our twenty four foot gooseneck trailer. we load and unload the hay bales with our tractor and loader, we also use the skid loader with bale forks on the loader to only unload hay bales off the trailer. We store our hay in a fenced in pens, so the cattle can't get to the bales. Pushing the bales in a row back to back so the rain and snow wont spoil the bales while in storage. I hope this article helps you learn something new and out baling hay, and what a farmer does to keep his cattle fed during the winter.