Third Crop Hay

This photo was taken on 09/22/10. As of 09/28/10 we finished baling hay for the year. We had a late start on hay this spring and are still behind. With the days getting shorter and the nights extremely cooler third crop hay can be hard to get dried down to below 20% moisture needed to bale high quality hay. Usually when baling larger bales it is important to keep the moisture below 16% but we purchased a preservative unit a few years ago that sprays a buffered acid on the hay and allows us to bale with more moisture. We purchase at least one 270 gallon tote every year at the ever increasing price of $2300.

Started cutting hay today despite the chance of rain tomorrow. The field we are working on is very heavy, starting to lay down, and has many wet gopher mounds so we hope to get it cut before it gets any worse. The drier the hay gets before it rains the more damage is done so usually a little rain the day after cutting won't hurt too much.


I followed my dad around and cleaned the dirt out of the swather with a scraper every 5-10 minutes for 1-2 hours. Some of the dirt stuck a lot worse than what the picture shows. Luckily it gradually got better as the ground dried and we got away from the outside of the field.