Baling swasi

Whitewing · Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2012 9:00 pm Post subject: Baling swasi

It seems like a month ago but I guess it's been only a week or so since I started baling a 110 acre pasture of grass known as "swasi". From the bit of research I've done on the plant, it appears to have been introduced into Venezuela in just the last few decades. While it serves as a general pasture feed for livestock, most of the use it gets in my area is a feed for horses. Here it ranks second to bermuda in popularity.

Anyway, after cutting my baling teeth on bermuda, swasi turned out to be an entirely different animal to bale. This particular pasture was not cut for the entire growing season and the plant coverage is now a thick mat of material. I'll post some photos to give you guys some idea of the conditions and challenges.

Here's a close-up of plant material as I found it.

This shot shows what swasi looks like standing and after it's been cut. For the record, it's so dry here now that I can cut and bale the same day.

I use a tedder on my bermuda and always am pleased with the results. That was not the case with swasi. Here's a shot of the ugliest windrows known to man.

After that first failure (the tedder experience), I decided I'd just pick it up right off the ground. Here's a shot of swasi "carpet" feeding into the baler.

Check out this shot. We've had strong winds for days now and along the edges where I'd baled previously, this stuff just rolls up.

When I made those first windrows I told my guys I had at least 1000 bales to be made. Again, I was thinking bermuda, and again, I was wrong. Swasi has a really fine stem and, in the end, it ends up making about the half the bales one would expect for an equal volume of bermuda.

And while it's not nearly as easy to sell as bermuda, the clients still show up.

The owner of the pasture asked if I could sell his bales for him and I agreed (with a service charge, of course). I also expressed my concerns with the fact that I had no experience selling swasi to my clients and that if I had to move the bales to my ranch, it might be too cumbersome to pull off. My ranch is at the base of the mountains you can see in the distance in some of the photos. Anyway, he offered some "sheds" he had available in the pueblo which cut that trip in half. Here's a shot of our hay in his "sheds".

When I left the ranch this afternoon, the sheds were empty. I made close to 2000 bales this past week and they've all been sold. I've got an order from a single client for 1000 bales for this week so I'll get started on them on Monday. So far, so good. Very Happy