Teresa & Mike CHS - Our journal

[farmerjan]

It will have to be tedded out to dry. All depends on your weather... if no more rain on it, it will not be very good quality, but if dried out good, will still be edible and usable in the winter. ANY HAY beats snowballs as we say here. If it gets wet and then dried the protein content will be lower... will be acceptable for dry cows, and can be fed to anything as a "filler" to keep their rumen working good... most will supplement poorer quality hay like that with some sort of grain/cubes/something.
If it gets and stays wet for too many days, then it can get mouldy and slimy... most here will go through and bush hog it to chop it up and let it go back on the field. You can't leave it in the windrows or it will smother the new growth trying to come up. It just all depends....

 

[Margali]

Another newbie question- what is it called when the machine fills about a 10ft diameter tube of plastic with hay instead of making square or round bales? Never seen it before but field on way to work was harvested that way.

 

[farmerjan]

If it is chopped and put directly into the tube, the "product" , chopped hay, will be called HAYLAGE as opposed to chopped corn stalks and all being called corn silage. Sometimes it is called wheat/rye/barley/sorghum/ whatever the kind of crop..... silage..... Alfalfa is called alfalfa haylage... rye is sometimes called ryelage etc....
Most alfalfa here is chopped for first cutting since the stems are thicker/stalkier..... you also do not lose as much of the leaves as you do for hay... loss of leaves when the alfalfa gets dry enough to bale as hay is called "shattering"..... 2nd or later cuttings of alfalfa the stems/stalks are thinner and will dry faster so make less stemmy hay.....
Many dairies will chop first cuttings of different crops as it makes a better feed when fermented.... and often it is done when the weather is IFFY.... not enough time to get it dry enough to make good hay.... so the quality of the plant is better if it is chopped and made into some type of silage.... if hay is made at a high moisture and then wrapped, it is called baleage.... we often do our sorghum/sudan hybrid grass as baleage.... it takes longer to dry because the stems are thicker...looks like corn somewhat but is planted close like any grass type crop. It ferments in the tube, in the bales....but is easier to transport since we can do it with the truck with the "bale bed" on the back....rather than have to load the silage into a cart or something to take it to feed...

 

[Mike CHS]

The weather forecast was decent enough to give me at least most of the day for the herbicide to do its thing. Got the tank filled up and set the herbicide next to the tank then decided to check out the sprayer before I finished up. Since it was obvious from several other unfinished things this morning this fell right in place and since I had trouble a couple of times earlier this summer, I decided the pump needed replacing. That was not a big deal since I had been making the old pump work (usually) but the fasteners and clamps were all broken and the pump was held down by a bungy cord. The nearest place to get a pump was up around Nashville so it was going to take better than a couple of hours to and from. Before I took everything off the tank, I plugged in the new pump and it didn't work either. I cleaned all of the connections and checked connectors for fit and still nothing. The electrical wires for the pump consist of a harness that goes to the tractor battery and an extension (both of which had on/off switches). I narrowed the problem down to the switch on the extension so I took it off and spliced the wires since that switch was redundant anyway and the pump worked.

Hopefully tomorrows forecast will be good also.

 

[Baymule]

That’s one of those situations where just getting prepared to do something takes longer than actually doing the job. LOL

 

[Bruce]

Happens all the time here Bay!!!

 

[Mike CHS]

It looks like the weather is going to cooperate and I should have at least 6 hours before any chance of rain so I can at least get the fences done and worry about the driveway another time.

I record a show called Nature on PBS and they had one about "Super Hummingbirds" that kept Teresa and I glued to the scrre with the amazing detail we had never seen before. If you get a chance to see it, you will enjoy it.

 

[Mike CHS]

I wound up getting the perimeter fences sprayed today but won't get the interiors for several days looking at the forecast.


Teresa was in the mood for some Mexican food so it was Chicken Enchiladas for lunch. She made a big enough batch that we were able to freeze a half dozen meals.

 

[Mike CHS]

Teresa thought the first batches of pickles were TOO sour so she went ahead and put up enough to replace them if they get more sour later. She wound up with 44 quarts of various pickles. The tomatoes and peppers are really producing and we have started to put them up in the freezer. We have quite a bit of room so we will freeze quite a few and then start canning tomatoes in a few weeks. The peppers we chop up and vacuum freeze most of them but we will cook quite a few to dehydrate.

 

[Mike CHS]

We wanted to make Lasagna today so we checked to see if we had everything yesterday since we were going to Kroger anyway. We obviously haven't made Lasagna in quite awhile since the pasta that we had expired in 2015. They might have been OK but I wasn't going to chance blowing a whole lot of ingredients for a fairly cheap box of pasta.