Question for S. Texas hay producers

[Texasmark]

Howdy! (Grin)

My sorghum-sudan is on the ground and I am experiencing humidity like you guys have down there....I was born and grew up down there so I know what it's like....but I was an urbanite then.

It's real thick and I started tedding right after I cut it Thursday. Been over it 4 times, last being this afternoon (Monday) and still no way near ready for rakin and rollin.

Considering the afternoon showers off the Gulf and all, how do you guys and gals get a crop put up?

Thanks,
Mark

 

[M-5]

Im not in south Texas but our humidity is similar. For the crop you have described it should have been cut with a conditioner to crimp and bust the stems which will aid In drying. Tedding to much can cause you to loose a lot of leaf. The only thing to do is hope for sunny days with temps in the 90's.

 

[callmefence]

I'm in central Texas. And I grow haygrazer and feed haygrazer hay but I do not have any haying experience.
I do watch and listen. Typically here it's just cut and allowed to lay 5 to 7 days. I am seeing some tedding going on, so I suspect others are experiencing the same thing. It's extra humid even for Texas.
The oldtimers also advice against planting to early. Plant in may so to cut in July. And as 5 mentioned nobody even attempt without a conditioner

 

[Texasmark]

On crimping: I used to have MOCOs but upon retiring, they were clumsy for my irregular, small fields. I also got tired of messing with sicklebars, not large enough to support the cost of a disc type MOCO, so I went to the very reliable, excellent cutting, zero hassle, drum mower and separate crimper like the old IH 404 and another one made by a machine shop in Corsicana, TX. which I converted from a drag to a 3 pt to see if that wouldn't be better in trying to crimp long stemmed product.

As it turned out, on plants where some were as tall or taller than the roof of my cab, the long stems just made it impossible to crimp. The edges that weren't part of the Austrian Winter Pea experiment with stems around 3' crimped just fine.

The alternative was tedding. The long stems made themselves vulnerable to the tedding action where they would get their stems cracked about every 6 inches. The other thing tedding does is to keep the crop rotated. Product on the ground gets scattered on top and the even spread allows the ground to dry out also.

On planting early yes, I am guilty of that for 3 reasons:

Old Farmers almanac predictions on moisture timing for the year, and they are right on target yet again (amazing.

Sugar Cane Aphids which hit me in 2014 on my 2nd (potential) cuttings regrowth first of July. I do not want to spray pesticide on a crop I am going to feed to animals, especially somebody else's animals.

Pounding crop gets from harvesting the first cutting really takes a toll on the regrowth effort. As I am describing, lots of tractor trips across the fields.

The weather has otherwise been with me as no rain is forecast for the forseeable future. The 5-7 days mentioned by "callmefence" is going to be what it takes leaning on the 7 days probably.

This fall I am going to go to 100% peas and work them in, in the spring like this year, but wait on the s-s planting till around May 15. This year I planted on April Fool's Day and had 5' growth June 1. So next year, planting later and looking at a 45 day harvest window it would put me into a July 1 harvest date which should be good for harvesting.....but bad for regrowth. Can't win 'em all. But I will give you this in parting: Peas are worth the effort!!!!!!

Thanks for all the replies,
Mark