3rd Cutting Alfalfa Harvest

hey guys how's it going so today is tuesday july 19th 2021 so today here the hoof trimmer's here today and my dad's helping him out so uh i got the cows fed this morning all the cats fed wait and feed the heifers here around lunch time uh he should be done trimming feet around lunchtime he starts usually about eight o'clock today here i'm planning on mowing some hay down uh specifically third cutting alfalfa um i can't say that word half of the time i say it like pacific that's better instead of specific so uh tomatoes 5140s back so we got the 5140 back or was it was it i think it was friday this past friday so we're going to hook this up to the disc spine could use 22.90 if we wanted to but this tractor here is air conditioned so i'll use it so start off here by checking the oil in it um the hydraulic oil should be good so i said about it had a oil leak and uh we'll go back here and look at it so i'm pretty sure it was this piece right here um the paint's kind of a different color than here so uh we got a used one because i couldn't even find a new one i don't even know what this is called but anyhow it cracked open i don't know if there's pressure in the hydraulics or what but anyhow that's fixed up now so the oil's good i'll pull it over to the shop get the air hose out blew this radiator out [Music] so i got that hitch on the draw bar here and i give the windows a little wash on this thing i don't know if you can see how many better so down back here now got to back up through this this bind here and hook it up so in the summer time at this spine we just let it sit out because we use it so much and in winter time uh a farm that we rent down the road here we keep it in their barn uh just to keep it out of the weather during the winter time but doesn't make sense to put it in the barn in the summer time because we're using it pretty much all summer for clipping pastures and mowing hay [Applause] so i went through and greased this bind all off uh there must be at least 50 grease fittings on this thing that's not exaggeration either all the universals on the power take off in here here right here right here right there right here so got all them greased um i can see why a lot of people don't grease their equipment but uh there's grease fittings on there so they're they're meant to be greased so the next thing i want to do this thing is see the knives are getting kind of wore out so we use what they call rock knives which they're i think they're made of heavier metal than regular knives you can't bend them once they bend up see how these are all bent up if you try to put a pipe wrench on them you want to be able to bend them down so gut knives are pre replace all of them so we're going to go ahead and do that and then maybe we can go mow some hay so usually whenever we change the knives out on this thing you always use the impact so there's a little nut that slides up in in the hole of the blade or the knife and uh then the bulk is down through it and threads into it so use this here to keep pressure on that while we stick a bolt down through it [Music] [Music] see this little piece here just fits up there the knife like that and then your bolt threads into it so this is where the pry bar comes into play keep pressure on that not there stick your bolt down through [Music] then move on to the next one so [Music] so so i got all the knives switched out on this thing everything looks good so we usually get about a cutting out of the knives so we have to change them each cutting uh first second third fourth and uh we're going third today so the fields of gravy melon is a little piece up here on top of the hill and outback of them round bales same video second cutting alfalfa harvest uh was on so third cutting will be on the same so i might as well just video here at home i like to do that so i'd like to fly the drone around doing stuff and i don't really want to fly the turn around on other people's property uh you never know how people are nowadays somebody could shoot my drone down or something like that so better off just to be safe and fly around here at home so uh we're gonna do what 10th gen calls it let's go my health i'm at the same field that i showed you guys in the last video so corn should be shooting toss them pretty soon i don't think so you can start to see these purple flowers right here's one and uh once those start coming out it's called shooting blossom once that starts um the feed value starts dropping so let's get her knocked down so on the first pass around the field you do have to run a little bit of hay down but the disc spine will come back through the opposite way that you ran it down so it'll pick it right up that'll make some really nice you gotta love the smell of that fresh cut head especially alfalfa [Music] so so one filled down [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so tomorrow i'll be raking bailing and wrapping this i don't know um it was starting to shoot blossom in places but i guess right now it's time to get it if you want to get good feed value out of it but it's not always about that if you're if we would have waited a little bit we probably got a larger tonnage off of this but it is what it is i have to start sometime because otherwise i won't be able to won't be able to help for fourth cutting alfalfa because i've been going back to school the second week of september i don't want to talk about that anymore and i have to because what farm kid likes to get back to school not me that's for sure and i know uh education is important but you know farming is important too you gotta you gotta make the feed for the cows you gotta feed the cows you get them milk the cows you have bed and the cows there's a lot of stuff that is in the farming but i'm sure i'll have plenty more farming in my life hey guys so it's the next day now uh my dad he went to go no more third cut and alfalfa down and uh i got the 2290 hooked up to the haytender here the new home 163 i believe yeah the only 163 model of her hate header i don't know if you guys think this is a little overkill probably too that i knew on the hate header or not you know what to say every kill is underrated so we got a little bit of rain last night and uh there's a good bit of water in the head and so uh we're gonna run the hate header over it and uh get it spread out so it can dry off a good bit before we can uh bail it up and wrap it so let's get to it so i'm going to start with the first field i made and uh that's just a little small field here and then we can go out and take that field out behind the bale so what you do to lower the hate header there's a string that you pull pulls these locks out back here at each cylinder and then that runs off the remote to lower it so you hold on to that rope and then that work your remote here and it'll lower the header down now we'll get out and uh adjust the tether down with this handle here and then the tether will be like that instead of straight across like it is now if you look at it so the these front teeth here we touch on the ground and then they'll fling the hay backwards we've got the first fill done headers all folded up let's go down and get the second fill [Applause] wait you guys can see that something red just flipped back through my pattern here i'm not sure what it is you have to get out and check it out let's check this out i'm not sure what it is what is this where'd you come from it's even ice cold too awesome so i'm not trying to encourage you guys to drink gatorade i'd rather encourage you guys to drink milk but uh what am i supposed to do i almost have to drink it it's iced cold it's even my favorite flavor too so before i hit this with the cutter it's all matted to the ground kind of like this all bunched up and uh whenever we run it through the tether the water will kind of fly off of it and then it'll cling it out spread it out nice so if the sun does come out which i guess it is coming out with a good bit of cloud cover so uh the places where i did ted it spreads it out so the sun can get it and dry the water off and that'll make more solid bales it might not be the wettest day but it's better than making bales that are real spongy and take forever to rap and don't run around so i got this field all headed and my dad i think he had to mow a piece of our hay and then somebody else's hay for them i don't think it's too much so usually we know this stuff every month usually some people know it every 28 days 28 days is basically a month yeah so you usually get about four cuttings off of this year sometimes you can get a fifth cutting off i don't know it depends on what the year's like so uh we'll get the hey tedder folded up we'll go back in i'm hooked to eight header pump the rake up to this tractor and uh grease it up and then we'll hook the baler up get that thing ready to go then you can come rake this up and bail it and wrap it now i can fold her up [Music] i don't know why it always takes forever to hold one of these sides up on this hay header it depends uh which remote you have it hooked up to on some tractors it'll be the opposite side it takes forever i don't know has to do something with the pressure i guess that don't make it hold up fast enough but yeah it just takes forever so i got the rake hooked up i think it was like uh my last video oh i mentioned how this skiddler here the drain plug wouldn't get tighter it wouldn't back out so we were messing with it and uh he had a neighbor told tell us to put an impact wrench on it and uh said sometimes uh just a quick burst of energy that it'll back it out well that didn't work and uh we made it even looser so we can't run it now because it leaks oil pretty good we don't think it's all the drain plug it's a whole uh i don't you know what you call it the thing that the drain plug screws into it's on the bottom of the oil pan they're just pressed into the bottom of the oil pan so i think we can maybe pop that out and then we can get a replacement plugs they make different things that you can i don't know what all they call them and stuff that you can put in different plugs and you can actually wreath they make things you can re-thread the threads for the plug too so we're gonna grab the grease gun here i had the rake hooked up come out and uh grease the rake off it does need some teeth put on it but i guess that's just gonna have to wait for today we're going to get by with it has plenty of teeth on it see there's like places where two of them broke off we'll have to replace them this wheel here's pretty bad as you can see but so i got the rake and the front end of the tractor all greased i'm not going to get raked for a little while yet it's almost lunch time so we'll back it over here out of the road then we'll get 2294 out put some fuel in it hook the baler up and uh get the baler ready to bail it's on full this tractor holds like 50 or 55 gallons of fuel and it's almost empty you gotta take a little while to fill her up so it is now 3 30. uh gotta head out with the tractor rake and uh start raking that alfalfa so i've had people in the past ask me if i'm a member of and road gear club no i don't rank in red gear but we've had before it just makes a better windrow we have a lot of groundhog holes and stuff in our field i got the first build done got four winners and you can see they're not the thickest um third cutting depends on the year whether it's a wet year or dry ear or this here here um knock on wood it hasn't been too bad um i mean we've had we've had really wet years really dry years in the past and this year here's been actually really good so we hit this header this morning um and we flipped it now we flipped it over the rake so if there was anything right on the bottom she'll be on the top now this stuff here is like really dry it's drier than i thought it would be so you can see today's not the the best day for drying hay but we got this dried out anyhow so that piece of my dad made this morning uh we're probably gonna make it tomorrow so yeah we'll get these fields here bailed out tonight and then get them wrapped here's an example right here why i'm not a member of the rink and road gear club see that big groundhog hole there now the rake's got to go over it but i could stick the wheel of the rake in there and go busting things up from going through here right here so so got this bill all raked up here it looks like the wind are a little larger in this build than they were in that small field so i think it's gotta yield a little better like i said it's it's dry i mean it has some wet places in it so we're still got to wrap it what you guys thinking is this asha approved got my wrap in here got the bell sphere on the wrapper hey it works i made her one trip didn't have to make three trips just to get the wrapper a roll rat and the bale spear all out here so we'll flip this spear off here dad started bailing so we'll drop the wrapper off put the spear on and uh go hole that bails off one of the time now usually whenever we have more people helping us like somebody driving this tractor and bail wagon and somebody loading we don't have anybody to run the bail wagon so i'm just going to haul off with the skid loader let me guess this is [Music] so we got like one and a half bales off that small piece here that's bailing and the larger piece now behind these bales so i got one bale and i'm gonna wait to get these in before i start wrapping so i guess we'll put the drone up in the air here and see if we can get some cool video about [Music] do [Music] that was a little bit of a rough landing i didn't realize it was gonna hit the ground like that so we got three bales out there i'm gonna um quit having fun here and uh get the work get that bales hauled off and then we can start rapping after we uh get them all hauled off [Music] oh [Music] [Music] so we got all that hay baled up and wrapped i'm not sure how many bales we got title but i know it wasn't very many compared to last cutting so uh yep that's gonna be it for this video um tomorrow uh we're gonna balance uh field down the road here at my dad made today so i probably won't video that i got enough other videos i need to edit and i'm still behind on my editing and yeah so thanks a lot for watching this video hope you guys enjoyed and we'll catch you guys later

Channel: Pennsylvania Dairyman

Views: 3,351

Rating: 4.9925232 out of 5

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Id: Yu4cU9wQOaw

Length: 28min 55sec (1735 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 17 2021