In the craze of tilling, seeding and fertilizing (among a million other things) we are hoping that you have had the opportunity to take a breather and take in the beauty and wonder of Mother Earth and the miracle of how things grow.
It won’t be long before the craze of swathing, raking and baling – even now, there are a few places in North America where the farmers are already hard at it making hay.
Soon, all across the continent, days will be filled with the sweet smell of freshly cut hay, long work hours and hopefully lots of heat and sunshine.
Inevitably, with those potential blessings there are the possibilities of conditions that are way too wet or way too dry.
Does that bring to mind the green trail of pulverized leaves that mark where the windrows were baled up?
The dryer the hay in the windrow the more brittle the leaves.
Take a look at the AG Maximizer Moisture and Leaf Loss Chart. It shows the relationship between the moisture that hay is baled at and leaf loss.
Dr. Dan Undersander has stated that the leaf loss (light blue) in hay that is baled at 16 – 20% moisture has been between 150 -300 lbs per acre.
What does that mean?
It means that if you are baling your hay at moisture levels of 14 % or lower, you could be losing more than 300 lbs of leaves per acre!
Let’s do a little math,….we’ll keep is simple.
Suppose that you are baling hay at 16% moisture and are potentially losing 200 lbs of leaf per acre.
If you are selling hay at $300/ton, that means that every 100 acres you are losing $3,000 (10 ton).
Now, it isn’t realistic to think that you will save all your leaf if you baled your hay at 22% moisture (after baling, drying it in the Maximizer to a level that it will keep); after being swathed, then raked and finally baled can be pretty rough treatment so there will be some leaf loss.
But it does get even better though. If you do improve the leaf retention in your field work, you will be increasing the quality of your hay which means more value = more $$.
Not only will you be retaining more leaf, because of more leaves you hay is worth more.
Who doesn’t need or want more value now adays?
The Maximizer shines at helping farmers keep what they have worked so hard for!
Comments