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A foot tall and 5 feet wide

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Big Muddy rancher

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The Alfalfa crop is deceiving this year. Driving by the field it looks short but when you take the time to untangle the vines they are about 5 feet long. The only other time I ever saw hay like this was last year. It must be running 4 to 5 ton to the acre but it's slow going cutting the tangled mess then my rake is built for light hay. I have plugged the opening at the back and high centered the baling tractor. Better then no hay but we aren't set up to handle these heavy crops. I baled 225 bales off of about 30 acres last night and this morning.
 
You are more than welcome to come and get both the discbines and the 2 rakes if you want. :D

We won't be using them anytime soon.


Do I have to say I told you so? :p :lol:
 
gcreekrch said:
You are more than welcome to come and get both the discbines and the 2 rakes if you want. :D

We won't be using them anytime soon.


Do I have to say I told you so? :p :lol:


A real friend would bring them down and show me how to run them. :D

I have been cutting hay on the flats for about 40 years and only twice have seen it this heavy. Usually it's barely worth cutting except if hay is really scarce and every little bit helps. :?
 
BMr - Our hay was much the same. I left almost half of it on the ground in places. When I do 2nd cut I plan to cut it the opposite way of 1st cut to make a cleaner job of it.

Gcreek - Climate change . . . care to expound on that a little more? :twisted:
 
gcreekrch said:
You are more than welcome to come and get both the discbines and the 2 rakes if you want. :D

We won't be using them anytime soon.


Do I have to say I told you so? :p :lol:


I've got heavy hay and my double 9 has'nt moved from last year. :wink:
 
I have a question for those of you that mow and rake hay [especially grass] rather than run a swather with a crimper.

Do you think it makes a difference on some of the ranker forage as far as how well cows are able to utilize it? I ask that because a couple of years ago I compacted a couple of cows on some rank grass hay that had been mowed and raked where I never have had a problem in the past with similar swathed/crimped forage.
 
We swath our hay without a crimper/conditioner and have never
had a problem compacting anything.

How rank was your hay and were the cows in good shape?
The only time I've heard of compaction was when cows were
more or less starving and they ate forage they couldn't digest
over a period of time.
 
No they weren't starving but it happened after a couple of very cold days. My vet came out and said he sees it from time to time but it was a first here. I think another contributing factors was they were a couple of old cows eating out of a bale feeder so they couldn't sort thru the hay as easily as if it had been unrolled.
 
I would venture a guess that that wasn't very good hay.
Have you ever heard of ADF? Thats Acid Detergent Fiber and
is something that is measured when you have a forage analysis
done. The higher the number the less digestable it is. So, if
you feed a bunch of straw (or poor quality hay) and the
cattle are hungry, they'll try and eat all they can and they
can't digest it. When it's cold they eat a lot to try and keep warm, so
the cold certainly could have been a factor, but not the total
reason they compacted. That is kind of a simple way of putting it...
hope this helps explain things.

Generally, the later hay is put up, the higher the ADF.
If you feed some protein with the poor hay, that helps the
rumen digest the poor hay. FWIW
 
Angus 62 said:
No they weren't starving but it happened after a couple of very cold days. My vet came out and said he sees it from time to time but it was a first here. I think another contributing factors was they were a couple of old cows eating out of a bale feeder so they couldn't sort thru the hay as easily as if it had been unrolled.

I agree with FH on the protein supplement. A few # of second cut alfalfa would work dandy, I'll bet. But---I'll also bet they weren't drinking much water.
 

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