Cutting Forage Mix Hay in the John Deere 4895

how's it going guys and welcome to today's video get out your umbrella dust off that rain jacket and pull out your rubber boots because a storm is coming how do I know that because my haze on the ground that's what we're talking about today on farmer Tyler ranch [Music] now all joking aside there really is not a storm forecasted at least in my neck of the woods for the next few days but it is kind of funny it seems like every year as soon as I get the hay on the ground something will show up on the weather forecast and it'll start to make me a little nervous so far we're good but it wouldn't shock me if we get a storm here within the week this year things got off to a rocky start as you guys know or if you don't I don't own any of my hay equipment I borrow it from a friend because I just don't have enough acreage to really justify owning any when you borrow things from people you kind of got to figure out ahead of time what days you're gonna use them I had it scheduled to use a swather on Friday and wouldn't you know the swather broke down on Thursday that meant that Friday morning instead of getting an early start like I wanted to I was waiting on parts at John Deere and waiting on the mechanic to get things fixed so I got out here later than I wanted to but that wasn't the only thing that I had working against me probably about half of this field ended up laying down on me and what that means is that the plants got too tall and instead of standing straight up they all laid over on the ground this is a huge problem because the hay equipment really isn't designed to cut hay when it's in this condition it can do it a swather can handle it for sure but you have to slow down so hay that I probably should have been going three miles an hour three and a half miles an hour through I was only able to go about point seven to maybe one mile an hour if I was lucky [Music] this turn cut in this field from an eight-hour job into about a 16-hour job as for what makes the hay layover I've got a couple different theories on that and I mean let's be clear in a way the hay laying down is a bad thing because it's really hard to cut but in another way it's a good thing because it means that there's a lot of tonnage out here so basically what I am thinking is that in the new half of the field here I've only planted one other year besides this one so the ground over there I think is a lot more fertile and it's quite possible that I got an over application of fertilizer and the plants just grew too much and the stalks couldn't take it the other thing that might have happened is some of you will remember I was having some issues with my spreader and it was throwing probably a double application right behind the spreader and it was light out on the side so might have been what I was seeing over there where that double application hit and the plants grew too tall and that's what caused those to fall over at any rate I think I need to make some adjustments and try to make sure that this doesn't happen again next year because they got a late start and I knew that most of the crop was laying over and I was gonna be out here for a long time I really didn't film a lot on the first day because I was just keeping my head down trying to get things done I got a little bit filmed with the drone but other than that that's pretty much it [Music] [Music] you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] by the time 9 o'clock rolled around and I was barely hitting the halfway mark out here I made the decision to split this up into two days of cutting I could have stayed out here all night but as the dew moves in and you cut you're just trapping a lot of moisture in that window and I didn't want to do that and it's not like they're gonna cure anyone the sun's down anyway so it just made sense to split this into two days it's day two of cutting hey I really hope that things go better today then they went yesterday I think we're all through the down stuff so hopefully this goes pretty fast desi went a lot better out here most of the hay on this side of the field was standing and I think that's because the ground over here wasn't quite as good the hay didn't get quite as tall and therefore it didn't fall over I know that there are going to be people that ask me what I have planted out here the answer is there are oats beardless barley and beardless wheat let's stick through a windrow and see if we can find all three oh I got these laid out on the tailgate here so you guys could get a better look at them this is the beardless barley you can see it's missing some kernels but that's what it looks like this is oats I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with them and then this is beardless wheat so you can see this looks just like a regular wheat plant that you would think about it doesn't have all the little hairs or the beards on the kernels and that just makes it easier for the animals to eat and more palatable basically makes it where they want to eat it this forage mix hay was originally put together with the idea of feeding horses but we found out that cows really like to eat it too apparently dogs liked it too my cows will eat a bunch of this and whatever is left over I'll sell the horse customers a swather or wind rower as some people call it I guess probably depending on what part of the country or what part of the world you're in but it's a pretty neat machine as we watch this thing go through the field you can see how the reel is spinning faster than the ground speed of the tires the reason for that is because it has to be going faster to pick that hay up and shove it into the sickle the sickle is basically like a hundred pairs of scissors with blades just doing this back and forth and that's what's cutting this hay off of the ground after the sickle cuts it - augers in the head or direct all the hay to the middle of the machine where conditioners throw it out the back into the wind rows that you see on the ground here a conditioner is to basically drums with sort of light gear teeth on them and they're spinning and intermeshing together and what that's doing is crushing the stems of the hay and the reason for that is because it helps the hay dry faster once a swather gets done spitting this hay out into the wind rows that you see on the ground now about seven to ten days later I'll be able to come back in here and bail it I know that some people are gonna say wow seven to ten days that is an eternity to dry hay and yeah that is a long time compared to other parts of the country where they can cut and bail in the same day it's just not like that here day two of cutting went much better out here pretty much all of this 20 acres was standing there were a few spots here and there where it laid down but I didn't have to do any of that point seven mile an hour creeping like I was having to do on the other side because of that I decided that I had plenty of time to film so I'll show you that now [Music] [Music] well after approximately 15 hours of cutting I finally have gotten this field finished it's definitely giving me some things to think about for next year how I can try to avoid having these same problems hopefully get things done and a little bit more of a timely manner thanks for hanging out in the field with me today guys and I hope I'll see you again on farmer Tyler ranch [Music]

Channel: Farmer Tyler Ranch

Views: 19,684

Rating: 4.9907551 out of 5

Keywords: hay, cutting hay, swather, john deere, 4895, farmer tyler ranch, grain hay, forage hay, forage mix, windrower, farm, tractor

Id: La6uZfU2LGk

Length: 13min 38sec (818 seconds)

Published: Mon May 04 2020