Newbie to Haying, will be using old AC equipment30

Hi all,

Hello Mike, Welcome to the AC site... best in the land of Allis-Chalmers...the right place to ask questions. Sometimes its fast answers, and sometimes it takes awhile.
 First off, I am looking at your pics, I have never run an allis 'swather', which is actually called a haybine, because you are combining three actions into one... Cutting the hay, crimping/crushing the hay in the rolls and laying it in a swath of desired width.
 But anyways, the swath you are making doesn't look like it is going through the wings, more like just fgetting out of the rolls and laying down on the ground.
 Do you have a panel ahead of the wings knocking it to the ground?
 On the haybines I have used, I set the wings for the widths of the windrows and how fast for it to dry. wider the better for fast drying, narrower for keeping some moisture in if your not going to get to it right away... in a day or two but three of four...  Rain coming, and need to cut, layit wide so when the sun comes out, it will dry better.
 On the allis haybine, the drive that turns the rotary motion into driving motion for the cycle, is notorious for giving troubles. Make sure that gear box has oil in it at all times... and if its leaking, get it rebuilt before it gets ruined. no parts left for it except for scrapped units and they are hard to find. I have one that the box is gone on. 
  We had an old haybne that we used and it was heavy , but it crushed the hay very well and layed it in windrows and we never raked the hay, but then we got a 990 IH that no matter what we did with it, the windrows didn't dry very well so we had to rake every thing if the hay was heavy. 
Windrow for the baler is best if you can have it uniform in width size and density, but thats not in my world. and don't try to make any speed records either...  hope everything is in good condition on your baler... like the knife on the blung is sharp, nd of proper distance between the knives, and the knotters are well greased and not rusty... oh yea, you have wire tie never mind.. somebody else will have to tell you on the ins and outs of wire tie, I only dealt with twine.  And don't bale anything that is wet green, or you will be replacing shear bolts and having moldy hay or  worse scenario, bales that get hot and set the barn on fire. Good luck.

I would open the wings and try to get hay to slide on them. They get rusty from non use and need polished up. Also there is a panel in front of the wings that is held up with springs, if I remember. Make sure it is all the way up when you are mowing. If you get it to make a good windrow you will be able to bale without raking. I always seemed to have better luck with alfalfa than grass. I'm sure your grass is different than mine in Iowa. We have mostly brome.

There is definitely an optimum moisture for baling hay. As noted above too wet it molds, and heats. If it heats too much it takes the barn with it. http://kimt.com/2016/06/19/fire-in-rockford-destroys-shed-equipment/

Somewhere I have a forage crops book, I haven't found it today. I've not baled hay in 15 or more years. There is a number for moisture that is desired, but I don't remember if that's 5% or 15% or some other number. I would suspect today there is a handy hay moisture test meter. What I did a few times involved a sensitive scale and a microwave oven. I took a sample of the hay and stuffed it into a styrofoam coffee cup and weighed it. Then I microwaved it testing the weight until more time in the microwave didn't change the weight. The % moisture was the amount the weight went down. Of course I weighed the empty cup first.

The farmer moisture test is to grab a fist full of hay. Grab the hay with both hands and twist. If its dry enough for safe baling, it will break, if its wet it will hang together.

Hay that heats moderately can be calmed by opening the bales and applying salt.

My baler was a twine baler and for the misses I carried lengths of twine long enough to wrap the bale in the normal twine or wire position plus about a foot. I tied one end into a loop with a bowline knot. To tie a loose bale I wrapped this twine around the bale and pulled the straight end through the loop. Then except for friction I had a 2:1 advantage for tightening the twine around the bale and I tied the loose twine to the loop. I never detected one of those coming untied.

http://extension.missouri.edu/p/G4575 is an online page on making hay. They suggest 18 to 22% moisture at baling.

My quick google search https://www.google.com/search?q=hay+moisture&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&gws_rd=ssl
turned up almost a million hits with many university extension bulletins on drying and testing hay, including a gaggle of moisture testers.

Gerald J.

Gerald J and DougS 18% moisture is too high for dry grass bales, it will be 30% or higher after you bale it and it sits for a day or two. And HOT. If you are making dry hay (not baleage) you want it at about 8-10% when you bale it, then it wil go up to about 13-16% and it will be okay. At least that is what we do at the farm I work at, I don't know if it is different out west.

Dan, I understand your point of view, and you are correct, water doesn't burn. But the drier hay around the hot hay will! Meaning, hay put up good 1 day, greener hay the next, or hay put up good in the afternoon, but went too long into the evening, or a big slug of hay didn't dry correctly. My dad was on the fire department for decades and chief for a very long time....I suppose every case of wet hay burning a barn could be a lie, but I don't think so. I've seen black char on hay, some that we baled, some that we bought, too close for comfort in my book!

Edited by Tbone95 - 20 Jun 2016 at 1:06pm

It's all good Dan, I hear you. I'd say conditions have to be absolutely "perfect" for the fire to start, but I do believe it's possible. I've seen plenty of mold too....I remember a time when I was probably a teen, we were feeding some stuff baled wet (didn't put it in the loft). During like the 3rd day, it was so hot it would burn your hand if you touched it. Honestly wasn't sure if I was seeing smoke or steam, and you could see black char. That was as close as I want to come to proving the theory. Obviously, if something is wet enough, it won't burn (silage!), but like I said, if there is super dry hay next to a super hot spot, and it gets a whiff of air at the right time, I think it's possible.

Maybe part of my grandfather's luck was that he baled them as heavy as he could get the strings to hold. I don't think there could be any air in his hay....
I have seen both those black bales and the white ones. I dislike the white mold alot more then the black at least you can breath around the black hay and yes them bales are so hot they feel like they will burn you but that is probably about 160 I think if it gets much hotter then that the mold dies. That is why they claimed that silage would cook not mold. I think that is probably true because we had trouble packing our bunker silo one year and it was nasty a little deeper then normal maybe 2 feet down instead of the normal 12 to 18 inches but below that it all just cooked into silage even though it wasn't packed that tight.
I don't miss that bunker silo only way to cover the ground we did with a crew you could afford but it always stunk here with that system. Dry hay is much better feed if you ask me.
Oh as to handling the moldy hay I have been told you really need a mask for the white ones that mold isn't healthy to breath in. Another good reason to feed them right out...

Something tells me getting it dry is not the problem,just look at the hills behind all dry not green. Easy to miss the day that is perfect here in the west. Just wait for a dew on it before you bale. I have seen grass hay lay for months and still be very good hay,when baled with a good dew.

Since you have a neighbor that is making hay may be better to follow his example than advice from us 100's or even 1000's of miles away about how dry it is. In general does not dry as fast in the west it seems to me. But if you water your hay ground you need it off so the water can go on. Have a cousin moved to Idaho,on alfalfa they water leave it until for sure dry then bale only at night to save leafs.



About the hay catching fire I would like to believe Dan but sure would not depend on it. Twice I have had hot hay both time old hay that had no mold. The landlord left a door open and cows got to 100 + bales for days and stood on top of hay and peed as they ate. She called in panic had to get hay out before her barn burned. It was very hot pile about 4 foot high. Pushed it out with a loader,could see steam or smoke puffing out you would get load broke off to push outside.Never say any chard black so I don't know.

Second time had a real Pacific coast rain storm.Flipped a 30 foot section of lean-to off barn allowing wind to blow the rest of the tin off that end of barn.With mud and flooding took 2 weeks to get wet hay out as no where to haul it to.Loaded it by hand it got hot through gloves in 40 and 50 degree weather.Again when bales opened as we dumped them a puff of something would go up,but again black charred hay.

JimIA wrote: Looks good! You must have gotten that round belt in there to run the sickle. If your sickle is in good shape you should be able to mow at least 5mph. The guy I bought my 829 from said you could mow easily at 6-7 mph in alfalfa. With that said you should mow at a speed you are comfortable with but I would mow atleast 3mph. Anything less and your machine will bunch the hay in piles due to material not running through at a speed slower than the reel. Jim

Dan, I have been at 4 barn burnings, two of them were just the farmer that worked alone and did not smoke, but the one was notorious for trying to get his hay baled as soon as he thought he could bale it... and was usually wetter looking than what we baled. - One barn fire, the neighbor said that he seen the renter go by with wet green bales and that he hoped that fellow was going to feed them right away... about a week later the barn went up in smoke. - Another fire was on a bigger farm and the help had gone up into the haymow and said he could smell smoke, and threw some hay down the chutes and  there was one chute that had the smell of hot hay coming up it. an hour later the fire broke out into the chute and the call to the fire department was made... many neighbors showed up and we tried to get the cows out of the barn, cows that were never use to being let out and in the fire they were running back into the barn... Fire dept hosed some of the cows off when they came out but most of those burned were already to fried to be saved. - Then there was one barn fire that they speculated that it was lightning that set that one, but the adopted kid was notorious for sneaking smokes too... don't know. - We had hay we thought was fit to bale but just on the verge of it and had to get it in before the rains came. That was hot hay, couldn't hold your hand in it. left it in a pile for couple days and then mowed it away single layer across the barn and put salt on it and then put the next layer down and salted that. it finally cooled down enough to where we felt safe about adding more into the barn.
 T-bone ". Obviously, if something is wet enough, it won't burn (silage!)"  have you ever heard of silo fires?  seen a couple of them one from a stave, one from a poured. then there was a blue silo that had a severe air leakage in the base (from bad construction practice by the builder) that had silage so hot in it that when unloading it, it would steam, then it started showing white ash and mold and feed was toxic that it was stopped being fed to the cattle, so about 30' were left in it. in the spring, nothing but white mold came out of it and spread on the ground in a corn field about 4" tall, the weeds under it didn't grow and didn't need to cultivate where the molded silage was spread. Silo was junk and came down in just one year.

 Different hay has different characteristics in it, timothy hay is small stem plant and thin leaves, dries fast, mix grass is usually thin stemmed too but alfalfa with so much leaves and a stem that holds moisture as well as clover you have to make sure that is really dry enough to bale. Well at least in this part of the country.

JC - silo fires - yes, of course. Like I said, anything where the conditions are right to burn, it will burn, that's a fact of science. Heat, air, fuel = fire.

Loose hay, I totally believe it. Air gets to the hot spot easier.

Chris it is scary as heck when one of the hay conveyors starts throwing sparks into a barn. Ours did that in the 80s I have a uncle in law who was up there and he can't look at the barn without remembering that day. We where lucky I was actually standing by the switch as they had just told me to turn it on so when they started yelling I didn't know what was wrong but I shut it off quickly. Lucky my uncle and his brother in law where able to throw the bales under the conveyor out the back of the barn and in our case nothing caught on fire. But I still remember that story and it is in the back of my mind when I think about when I will store hay. That is just one more reason I don't really want to put that conveyer back into use. For now I don't need to maybe in a year or two that will be different when I get the rest of the fields opened up.

We don't do this on a regular basis, but when we have some hay that is baled wetter than we like, we will stack the bales with salt between the layers. We get some 50 pound bags of feed salt and will put down a layer of bales then scatter salt on it before putting down the next layer. Hay has always come out dry and green with no mold. Some in our area plan on doing hay this way. We don't but if we have a couple loads not yet dry while trying to beat a rain, it works good for us. Steve

Dan, that's a good question. Since we only do it on a load or two, we put salt on probably heavier than it needs. Just being safe.  Don't quote me but I think I heard that a couple hand fulls per bale is enough. We are probably putting 2-3 times that. I'm sure it depends on how wet the hay is.