Rain on hay?

[farmerlady]

Ok, I need to cut my hay like yesterday. I looked at the forecast, but there seems to be a lot of rain in the forecast. I have older equipment; if the hay gets too high, it struggles. I was wondering if it were to rain after cutting, but before raking, how bad that would be. It is just grass hay, no alfalfa. Also, just out of curiousity, does anybody just wanna come cut and bale it for me? haha

 

[dun]

You need some way to turn it so it can dry after it's rained on. Usually a tedder is used for that. I've had to put up hay that I had to dead 4 times before it was dry enough to bale becauese of frequent rains.

 

[farmerlady]

You need some way to turn it so it can dry after it's rained on. Usually a tedder is used for that. I've had to put up hay that I had to dead 4 times before it was dry enough to bale becauese of frequent rains.

I don't have a tedder

 

[Rafter S]

As long as you let it dry before baling it will be fine. As dun said, going over it with a tedder will speed the drying process. If you don't have one, just turning it with a rake is better than nothing, or even raking it to bale and waiting a few hours before baling if it's not quite dry. My only experience with hay is here in southeast Texas where we don't have too many problems with getting hay to dry (most years).

Be advised that the rain will make the hay darker than you'd expect, so if you'd planned to sell it that may be a problem. How much darker depends on the grass type. I don't have information on what it does to the nutrient quality, but I've observed that rained-on hay seems to be more palatable to cattle. I remember that years ago my father had some that stayed on the ground about 2 weeks before he finally got it up. He figured it wasn't much good, so he rolled it up without string and dumped it in a gully. The cows ate almost all of it, even though there was ample grass in the pasture.

 

[dun]

He figured it wasn't much good, so he rolled it up without string and dumped it in a gully. The cows ate almost all of it, even though there was ample grass in the pasture.

It was the dumping it in a gully that got them to eat it. I baled 20 acres of pretty much nothing but spiny pigweed. Neighbor took it to dump in his gullys for erosion control. Cows cleaned it up like it was candy. The ugly side effect is now his pastures are almost choked with spiny pig weed from all the seeds they ate.

 

[dun]

You need some way to turn it so it can dry after it's rained on. Usually a tedder is used for that. I've had to put up hay that I had to dead 4 times before it was dry enough to bale becauese of frequent rains.

I don't have a tedder

If you have a side delivery rake, rake it one way, don;t combine wind rows. Let it dry then rake it the other way. Keep doing that till it finally drys. Had to do that before I got a tedder. Takes a helluva lot of fuel but it's better then the hay rotting on the ground

 

[Rafter S]

He figured it wasn't much good, so he rolled it up without string and dumped it in a gully. The cows ate almost all of it, even though there was ample grass in the pasture.

It was the dumping it in a gully that got them to eat it. I baled 20 acres of pretty much nothing but spiny pigweed. Neighbor took it to dump in his gullys for erosion control. Cows cleaned it up like it was candy. The ugly side effect is now his pastures are almost choked with spiny pig weed from all the seeds they ate.

We had a Jersey milk cow when I was a boy that loved pigweed. I wish they all did, because I hate the stuff.

 

[skyhightree1]

I have cut hay while it was sprinkling because the next day was going to be clear the hay did not have the discoloration because grass was still green. When it starts drying and gets wet that's when the discoloration happens.