Haying Pictures

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creekdrive

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Alberta, Canada
I'm always taking pictures of things (mostly cows, or animals, or nice scenery), but I never seem to get pictures of us actually doing something. So I've made an effort this year to try and get some pictures of seeding, haying, and hopefully harvest etc. I figure it will be neat to look back 20 years from now and see what equipment we were using or what the crops looked like etc.

Anyway I just thought I'd share some pictures of the haying so far this year.
I don't actually do any of the haying work - I let the guys stick to that job. I'll haul bales...but so far I've avoided learning how to run the cutter or baler which is fine with me! This year we have the best hay crops we've had in years, so a good year to start taking pictures for the archives :)

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The first piece they cut. Has only been used as pasture the last 5 or 6 years.

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first round

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all baled up. Just shy of 4 bales to the acre in the end.

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another piece - only the 2nd year it's been seeded to hay. I don't know for sure what the final count was but I think close to 6 bales to the acre! That might be pretty standard for the areas some of you guys are in, but it don't happen very often this part of the world.

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a 80 acre piece. Probably the poorest crop this year and it was still almost 3 bales to the acre

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they are baling this piece today

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the other side of the field

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a piece that hasn't been cut yet

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baling up a little 3 acre piece that was seeded down last spring.

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some of the green feed is ready to be knocked down too. He cut this piece yesterday. Getting a few wild oat patches, but the cows won't mind too much.

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For awhile it didn't look like hay was ever going to get cut or baled, it just kept raining every night. Now we've had a stretch with no real rain to speak of (a few little storms that have past through, but we've been lucky and they've missed our hay) and they are pretty well caught back up to the haybines. Running 4 balers and my dad is down for a few days to help and is cutting in a different field. There's a bunch of other fields that I don't have any pictures of yet, but I'll try to remember to add to this thread as I take pictures.
 
We've had a terrible year for hay here in middle Georgia. None of our fields made 2 rolls to the acre, and we're still waiting on getting a second cutting. My wife usually does all the raking and drives the truck as I'm loading the hay trailer.
 
Great pics. Really good yields. I've been getting about 2.5-3 4x6 bales per acre. I've been disappointed with the yields, last year I averaged closer to 4/a. The grass seems as thick as ever. I think it must be because we finally bought a new baler at the end of last summer and the new one is making much tighter bales with more hay per bale.
 
Our hay crop is terrible this year. So far getting ~1.5 4x5 bale to the acre. Never had trouble making all the hay I need and some to sell within 5 miles of home before, this year I'm buying hay stumpage as far away at 40 miles from home just to have enough for the winter.....
 
Pretty green fields and good yields per acre. Hasn't been much green around here since late April, early May.
Everything has just seen one cutting with low yields.
You're making us Georgia boys jealous!
 
The last couple of years if we managed a 2 bale/acre field we were pretty thankful for it. It was so dry last year we didn't even cut a lot of the pieces as they wouldn't have even made 1/2 bale/acre. Most years we are happy for 3 bales/acre. Looks like we will average somewhere around 4-5 over the whole works this year. Very rarely will we get a 2nd cutting and usually even if it was worth cutting a 2nd time we will just turn cows out on it instead.

TexasBred":lwb1hs24 said:
What kind of grass are you baling in the pics?? BTW beautiful pics.
It varies piece to piece. Most fields are a mix of brome, meadow brome & alfalfa. Might be some orchard grass in a few pieces too.
 
We are always prone to drought up in this area, so I know how all you guys feel that aren't getting very good hay crops this year. It sucks. Last year the only thing that saved us was a really late seeded crop of barley/oats for greenfeed. We had no spring moisture and it didn't rain till mid August. That greenfeed caught all the right rains and we had unusually late frost in the fall - it made 7 bales to the acre (our bales are 5x6) and without that there would've been a lot of good cows heading to town...
 
Nice pictures, and quite a variety of old iron you run.

I don't know what the weight of your bales is.. my record yield here was from a 6 acre field, got 660 x80 lb bales on the first cut, and 500 on the second, grazed the third...
 
creekdrive":7ns5hcnh said:
I'm always taking pictures of things (mostly cows, or animals, or nice scenery), but I never seem to get pictures of us actually doing something. So I've made an effort this year to try and get some pictures of seeding, haying, and hopefully harvest etc. I figure it will be neat to look back 20 years from now and see what equipment we were using or what the crops looked like etc.

Anyway I just thought I'd share some pictures of the haying so far this year.
I don't actually do any of the haying work - I let the guys stick to that job. I'll haul bales...but so far I've avoided learning how to run the cutter or baler which is fine with me! This year we have the best hay crops we've had in years, so a good year to start taking pictures for the archives :)

Sweet that looks so much like Nebraska except for the yellow stuff and the type of trees you have (we have more cottonwoods, elms, and red cedar, you must have more aspens, pines etc)
 
NECowboy":hmsgrgfx said:
Sweet that looks so much like Nebraska except for the yellow stuff and the type of trees you have (we have more cottonwoods, elms, and red cedar, you must have more aspens, pines etc)

The yellow stuff is canola. It looks pretty when it's blooming, but I hate the smell of it.

Trees are pretty boring around here too. Mostly just poplar trees and a few willows around the sloughs. No natural pine trees in this immediate area. They do grow okay though if you plant them in your yard. The further west you go the more pine you get. A couple hours west and there is a nice mix of pine & deciduous trees.
 
Nesikep":3qr92ahx said:
Nice pictures, and quite a variety of old iron you run.

I don't know what the weight of your bales is.. my record yield here was from a 6 acre field, got 660 x80 lb bales on the first cut, and 500 on the second, grazed the third...

We do have a mish mosh line up of equipment. Had 4 balers running yesterday & 1 cutter. None of it's new by any means, but it all runs and when it breaks down they can actually fix it themselves without having to take it to town or get a guy out. This spring they did have a little trouble finding baler parts though - might be time to upgrade to some newer ones again.

I think the bales weigh probably 1200 lbs. I could be off though - We haven't weighed any in a few years and my memory isn't always the best when it comes to that kind of stuff haha
 
creekdrive":crd1qnpk said:
NECowboy":crd1qnpk said:
Sweet that looks so much like Nebraska except for the yellow stuff and the type of trees you have (we have more cottonwoods, elms, and red cedar, you must have more aspens, pines etc)

The yellow stuff is canola. It looks pretty when it's blooming, but I hate the smell of it.

Trees are pretty boring around here too. Mostly just poplar trees and a few willows around the sloughs. No natural pine trees in this immediate area. They do grow okay though if you plant them in your yard. The further west you go the more pine you get. A couple hours west and there is a nice mix of pine & deciduous trees.

Actually I like the cottonwood and elms except for when they produce cotton. I grew up in the Southeast so the wide open vistas, big sky, and sparse trees is kind of cool to me kind of a mix of pioneer/western movies (Great Plains = Midwest meets West/where the west begins imo). Me and wife's property is a little more rugged - some canyons, bluffs, but nothing more than 100 feet tall, but also some nice rolling hills on it. Can look out over the valley like that that's about 400 feet below where we are and stretches about 30 miles in horizon. Love the scenery here. AB looks awesome too. You guys are much closer to Rockies (it's about 6 hours for us).
 
NECowboy":3lfeitjh said:
Actually I like the cottonwood and elms except for when they produce cotton. I grew up in the Southeast so the wide open vistas, big sky, and sparse trees is kind of cool to me kind of a mix of pioneer/western movies (Great Plains = Midwest meets West/where the west begins imo). Me and wife's property is a little more rugged - some canyons, bluffs, but nothing more than 100 feet tall, but also some nice rolling hills on it. Can look out over the valley like that that's about 400 feet below where we are and stretches about 30 miles in horizon. Love the scenery here. AB looks awesome too. You guys are much closer to Rockies (it's about 6 hours for us).

Nebraska sounds very nice! You aren't too much farther to the mountains than we are. It's a good 4.5 hr drive to get to the mountains from where we are (we are a lot closer to the Saskatchewan border than the BC). We have quite a diverse landscape around home which is nice. Two quarters of land side by side, one might be completely flat and the other will have great big hills and/or deep coulees.
 
Love the pictures! Glad your getting good yields. We had a great first crop around here but there was a lot baled as balage and tubed.
 
Some more pictures from the past couple of days. Getting closer to being done the hay.

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cut some pieces out of some pasture we haven't had to use yet. Going to hopefully have a kid that we know come and make some square bales for us. We don't use many but always handy to have a few kicking around.

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same piece - another angle.

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this piece was probably the worst that they cut and it's still pretty good this year. It really should have a cross fence put up and just be used as pasture - one day!

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As always - thanks for letting me share!
 
Beautiful country you have there. I have been to central sk a few times hunting. Never was able to stay long as I wanted. That is a wild looking core in that last bale.
 
Kingfisher":2lq8hsb1 said:
Thanks for pics. Nice country. What's that river/creek in picture? Where are you going to put all that hay??

Thanks Kingfisher.
It's a creek, Goose Creek - here's another view:

The creek runs right through our home piece. Kind of inconvenient sometimes, but it sure is beautiful.

The hay gets stored outside. I see most people on this board have hay sheds and what not. You don't find many guys in this part of the world that have their hay inside. Some guys that sell hay have it shedded or tarped but the vast majority of hay just sits outside here. We just put it in rows in a single layer. Some guys will stack them. Hopefully after the good yields this year we will have a bunch leftover and have some carryover. We try to keep a years worth of carryover, but that hasn't happened for 5 or 6 years now.
 
littletom":1rw5mjq8 said:
Beautiful country you have there. I have been to central sk a few times hunting. Never was able to stay long as I wanted. That is a wild looking core in that last bale.

Thank you. Soft Core balers is all we run. They can get kinda crazy looking, but I think they look neat.
 

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