Every summer, I get dozens of questions about haying today compared to what folks observed in grampa’s time back in the 1940s. Some of these questions seem pretty basic to a farmer. I immediately think of the statement, “There is no stupid question, only a stupid answer.”

My inquisitive friends make me realize that only two per cent of today’s population are farmers and the other 98 per cent of our population are not. Many of my older friends worked on a farm when they were kids but that was a half a century ago.

Things have changed. We drive cars on paved roads now, not the horse and buggy on a sandy-gravelly road. The way haying is done has changed too.

Grampa used to cut hay around the first of July, called patriotic hay, or after the twelfth of July, called orange hay. Today most farmers cut hay by the stage of maturity. Hay cut before it has any blossoms showing has usually more than 20 per cent protein and is very digestible. In nature, most baby fawns are born in late May or early June because that is when the pasture is highest in protein and most digestible so the momma deer can produce lots of milk to feed twin fawns or even triplets.

When hay is about ten per cent blossomed, protein is about 16 per cent and digestibility begins to drop. When hay is in full blossom, the bees love the blossoms, but protein drops to about 12 per cent.

Most dairy farmers like to begin haying before the blossoms appear and cut the hay again every 28 days before it blossoms again. When this early cut hay is fed to milk cows, they make more milk with less grain required, and hence more efficient milk.

Today farmers don’t cut hay with the horse anymore or coil the hay by hand into small stacks with pitch forks. When farmers hire employees to help, there are better, more efficient ways to make hay with a lot less manual labor.

Today’s hay is usually cut with a disk mower which has a number of mower blades about the size of a push lawn mower. Each blade or disc cuts about 15 inches wide and these cutting machines have enough discs to cut a swath from seven to 18 feet wide in one pass. Most of these machines also have big intermeshing rubber rolls, kind of like was in grandma’s old wringer washing machine only much bigger and stronger, which will squeeze and crush the hay stems allowing them to dry faster. Unlike grampa’s horse drawn mower, these disc-bines can cut at a speed of eight or ten miles per hour allowing farmers to cut as much as 100 acres of hay a day.

There are different ways to handle hay once it is cut. The small 40 pound square bales have all but disappeared because of the cost and shortage of labour to handle thousands of these bales and store them, often in a hot, unventilated barn loft. Large round bales are now the norm and can be seen on most farms in the county.

Big round bales are too heavy to move by hand and both farmers and employees would rather bale and move them from an air conditioned cab of a tractor than pile those little square bales in a hot barn loft. We see an increasing amount of plastic wrapped round bales because farmers are cutting hay with less maturity which is harder to dry than that mature patriotic or orange hay that grampa cut in the hot, dry part of summer.

A large round bale that is not wrapped can only be made after the cut hay is allowed to dry for a couple days. Plastic wrapped round bales can often be baled in the afternoon if the hay was cut in the morning because when it is wrapped air tight it keeps kind of like pickles or sauerkraut. Animals love eating hay that was ensiled because of the nice smell and the sweet taste. Ensiling changes some of the starches in the feed into sugars.

Round bales can be wrapped when the moisture of the hay is about 60 per cent moisture in the field into individual wrapped bales that resemble giant marshmallows. Wet bales can also be transported close to the barn and wrapped in a long plastic tube that is sealed, air tight at each end.

We are starting to see some different coloured plastic wraps. Different coloured wraps give the farmers a chance to wrap bales from different fields, different cuts of hay or different kinds of hay into different coloured packages. This can allow selection of different qualities of feed next winter for different needs.

We see some large square bales in our county but hay must be very dry before baling into large square bales or else they will must or spoil. Large square bales are preferred by truckers because they stack better into a big van or on a flat bed trailer. You may see trailer loads of large straw bales in the fall made when it is dryer weather.

Many dairy farms use haylage that is picked up with a forage harvester when hay moisture is about 60 per cent. Making haylage is also a quick labour efficient way to harvest hay. It is not uncommon to harvest a 100 acres a day of top quality haylage. This allows a farmer to fill and seal a large bunk silo with an entire cut of hay in a few days.

Something that we do not see while driving by on the road is that many farmers apply an inoculant to the hay while baling or chopping. This inoculant has special bacteria in it that speed up the ensiling process by getting rid of the extra air in the silage that can increase spoilage.

Plastic has been in the news lately because it is made from petroleum and is very slow to decompose. Farmers have been aware of this for many years. Plastic wrap, twine and silage covers are an expense every year and a nuisance to dispose of. Twenty years ago farmers could buy plastic wrap made from corn. It was legal to burn because there were no hazardous gasses released when burned. Now only plastic made from petroleum is available.

Bunker silos of haylage use the least amount of plastic per ton of feed. Often 1,000 ton of feed is stored in one bunk silo. Studies conducted in several universities have proved that if bunk silos or hay is not covered or sealed from air or weather it can result in as much as 50 per cent spoilage. If some of this spoiled feed is mixed with good feed, productivity of the animals fed can decrease very quickly. When bunk silos are sealed with two layers of plastic, spoilage can be reduced by almost 100 per cent. This can both reduce the number of acres needed to feed the herd and increase the production and efficiency of the animals.

The first layer of plastic is very thin and flexible, kind of like saran wrap to seal out the air. The top cover is usually white on top to reflect the hot sunlight and black on the bottom to keep in heat in the cold winter months when silage can freeze. The bunk is then covered with recycled car tires to keep the wind from blowing the plastic cover off and help keep the plastic covers pressed tightly against the silage to further help exclude air from infiltrating to silage pile. Sometimes turkeys or other birds might pick a hole in the plastic.

There is a lot less labour involved in farming today but timelines are just as important as ever.

If a farmer is late for church or stuck on the road with a big slow machine when you are in a hurry; he’s probably just trying to beat the weather.

Chris Judd is a farmer in Clarendon on land that has been in

his family for generations.

gladcrest@gmail.com

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