Tips for a Successful 2013 Hay Season

Gearing up for a Successful Hay Season

Ongoing drought conditions and hay shortages have made the need for good quality forage crucial. Specific management practices are necessary to maintain hay quality and minimize hay loss during harvest, transportation, and storage of large round bales. The following helpful tips will ensure that when the hay is ready in the field you and your equipment will be too!

Windrower Inspection:

• ·         Sickle-bar headers: Replace cutter bar teeth and ledger plates. Replace the guards once yearly.

• ·         Disk mowers:  Replace knives and rotate or replace worn turtles covering the knives. Proper blade maintenance is critical to achieving a good cut. Blades must be sharp to cut the forage cleanly and to minimize stem and leaf shattering. Grease all lift system wear points. Check all belts for signs of wear and check the tires and tire pressure to insure proper inflation.

• ·         Self-propelled machines: Change engine oil and filters, and blow out all air filters, including the cab air filter. Make sure the radiator is free of dirt and debris. Stock up on key replacement parts such as cutter blades, sickles sections, guards, drive belts and hoses.

Round Baler Inspection:

• ·         Grease all of the grease zerks on wear points and chain lubricating.

• ·         Inspect the belts on your baler for damage. The belts should be running straight and not coming into contact with other belts of side sheets of the baler. Many times the belts can stretch and need to be resized to proper length. Be sure to take the belts off and measure them every two years to ensure they are all the same length (plus or minus one inch). Also check the lacings on the belts every 800-1,000 bales.

• ·         Check the chain to ensure proper length is maintained. Over time the movement of the chain over the sprockets will cause the pins and rollers to wear and become elongated or oval-shaped. If this happens the pitch of the chain will change because of the increased length. At only 3 percent extension the chain should be replaced to avoid failure.

• ·         Replace any broken pickup tines.

• ·         Check gearbox fluid levels and change if necessary. Run the baler for about a half hour and then check the temperature of the bearings with an infrared temperature gun.

Cutting hay:

Cut hay after the dew is gone and when the topsoil is dry to reduce soil compaction and hasten hay drying. A long stubble keeps the windrow off the soil surface to aid drying and improve subsequent pickup performance. Research shows hay quality is increased when hay is cut while the sugar content remains higher in the plant. Cutting late morning or early afternoon will result in lower quality hay as the plant sugar content decreases with increased air temperatures. Choose the right blade for the job. A shallower 10 or 11 degree blade creates less air lift thus pulling less dirt into the forage. Thick matted forage may require a blade with more lift such as an 18 degree blade. Set the cutter height between 1.5 and 3 inches. Avoid pitching the cutter bar downward at too steep of an angle to reduce dirt contamination and knife wear. Ideally, the cutter will gently float across the ground without scuffing the surface. If you see scuffs across the field you don’t have enough flotation pressure, or the mower is set too heavy. If you see waves in the field, you have too much flotation pressure, or the header is set too light. If the field surface is rough and uneven, flotation should be increased making the head lighter to glide over rough terrain.

Conditioning:

Conditioning speeds drying by opening the waxy cuticle layer surrounding the stem to allow moisture to evaporate faster. Hay conditioning can reduce drying time by two to five days. Correctly adjust the conditioners to maintain adequate roll pressure uniformly along the entire roll length. The roll gap is one of the most crucial adjustments for the conditioner. Apply enough pressure to the hay to cause a noticeable break in the stem skin, but not so much pressure that leaves are broken off. In general the roll gap should be at 1/16 inch or less. Set the roll tension tight enough to achieve a consistent roll gap, if the crop is being over-conditioned then reduce the tension. Keep the rolls clean and free of material. Check and make sure the roll is not worn down in the center and replace the worn rolls if necessary. It is essential to maintaining uniform pressure on the conditioner roll. Adjust the swath board to match the width of the baler pickup. Make the windrow width as wide as possible; it should be at least half the width of the baler pickup to minimize baler loss. Ideally the swatch should be nearly the full width of the baler pickup.

Raking and Windrow Formation:

Raking can form swathed hay into a windrow or accumulate two or more windrows into one. More leaf loss can be caused by raking hay than by any other harvest operation. When raking, synchronize the field speed and PTO speed to provide a gentle lifting and turning action. This will help avoid aggressive handling of the forage and excessive leaf loss. Set rake tines to skim just above the ground so they don’t dig up dirt, there should be one-half to one inch of ground clearance at all times. To form bales of consistent density and shape, make windrows uniform in width and uniform in the amount of hay contained. As mentioned previously it is best to create a windrow as large as possible to meet the baler pickup capacity and reduce field loss. Loss occurs as the bale turns within the bale chamber, so try not to run the baler when there is no hay feeding into the chamber to reduce unnecessary hay loss.

Baling:

When hay is baled, moisture content should be no higher than 18-22 percent. The higher the moisture content the less loss will occur so try to bale with the maximum moisture content without going above 20 percent to prevent spoilage. Synchronize the field speed to the pickup rotational speed to reduce pickup loss. If forward speed is too slow, the pickup device snatches the hay and pulls the windrow apart as it feeds. Or, if the forward speed is too fast the hay will start to bunch up in front of the pickup. The windrow should flow into the baler with minimum disruption. The operator should follow a weaving pattern to fill each side of the baler with crop material evenly. The feed rate should be as high as possible to minimize the number of turns within the bale chamber. A high feed rate can be attained by using large windrows and high forward speeds. Where windrows are small or field speeds must be slow, use a lower PTO speed.