Ben Reilly

S Bengi wrote:How many hay cutting do you do on the 3acres?
How much hay do you get per cutting and in total per year?

Once we know how much hay you produce we can then figure out how much your pasture will produce.

It probably safe to assume that you get 2.5ton of hay per acre per year aka 100 haybale. Which is about 3ton/6000lbs of pasture
https://www.nass.usda.gov/Charts_and_Maps/Crops_County/al-yi.php

In my area during the active growing season you probably need 3acres of pasture per cow-calf animal unit.
You will probable need another 3acres of hay/pasture for the winter season assuming you are in zone 6 vs zone 9 Florida or Zone 3 Wisconsin

There are things that we can do to increase the health and productivity of your pasture/hayfield.

I had a neighbor cut my hay for me the last 2 years, both of which we had partial drought or bad weather during. He did 2 cuttings a year but I think I could get a third cutting out of it.

Both years were very similar for yield. First cutting was about 5 tons (10,000 pounds) and second cutting around 4 tons (8,000 pounds). I would assume a third cutting would be between 3-4 tons. I'm basing this off of the fact that he makes 5x5' round bales which are averaged at 1,000 pounds each.

My pasture borders the hay field and has some hay spreading into it, but otherwise it's whatever the native grass around here is. It seems to get about 3' tall by early to mid-July here.

D Nikolls wrote:I will not inflict my imperfect grasp of the options on you, but rather suggest reading the pdfs available at the link below, especially the third one. Hope that helps!

https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/ia/technical/landuse/pasture/how+to+use+a+grazing+stick/



I note the suggestions of cutting and measuring at 1" or ground level with dismay, though; surely from a practical perspective it is better to cut a couple inches higher, at a level where the grass will recover much faster, and thus measure available forage to a desired target level...?

Thanks, I'll take a look at that!

Hi, everyone. I have a question on how to determine how much animal food/dry matter is in a pasture.

For background, we're looking at getting a cow and probably some sheep in the near future to feed our family. I have about 3 acres of hay and a roughly 1 acre pasture (more might be available seasonally but I'm planning on 1 acre for now). A neighbor farmer has cut my hay the last few years and I know what to expect for yields from that. However, I am unsure of how to measure how much food my pasture produces.

I am currently mowing/maintaining it to try and keep the weeds down. I know that the most accurate way to measure available food in grass is to cut it, dry it, and weigh it.

My question is, if I'm going to do it this way, how often do I do this? And do I cut from the exact same sample areas? Cutting from the same sample areas would tell me how much grass grows each month (or however long between tests) while new sample areas will tell me overall growth, but I'm also under the assumption that grass that's cut/grazed grows more vigorously than uncut grass.

Any advice would be helpful. Thank you!

R Scott wrote:1) you are right to be concerned, chances are good there will be decomposed rubber in the oil plus who knows what grade of oil it was or how badly it has decayed.  Not worth the risk to a modern tractor.  You can pull the fittings and drain some of the oil into a clean container to inspect it for visible decay, but that still won't tell you if it's chemically compatible with your tractors oil. It is a bit of work to cycle all the cylinders and change out the fluid, but worth it.

2) basically, yeah.  Find a manual to make sure you get ALL the grease fittings, some are REALLY hidden.

Thanks! Glad to know I was on the right track.

Hey, I had a few questions about working with older implements. I was hoping someone here might be able to offer me some insight. I have an old haybine that came with the farm. It clearly hasn't been used in a while and is in somewhat rough shape. However, everything that's supposed to move appears to move, and I'd like to try hooking it up to my tractor at some point to see how it does. This leads me to my two questions.

1) Is it a bad idea to hook up an older implement's hydraulics to my tractor? I have no idea about the condition of the hydraulic fluid in the haybine and don't want to contaminate my tractor.

2) I'd like to grease all the grease points on the haybine before hooking it up to power or really moving the mechanical parts a lot. Again, I have no idea how old the grease in there is. Is it sufficient to just add new grease until the new stuff comes out, or do I need to do something more involved first?

Thanks in advance.

Peter Ellis wrote:

Ben Reilly wrote:Just wanted to give a quick update. The branch I chose above is too thin to support the rake head I was going to put on it. If anyone is planning on going this route, I probably would pick branches that don't go down to less than an inch think. Mine tapered to maybe 5/8" thick.

I'll just have to try again once the garden settles down briefly. :) Appreciate everyone's replies in here.

I might suggest that you're planning on an oversized head for your rake ;) 5/8 at the tips going into the head ought to be a pretty good size. You don't want that business end of a wooden rake to be very heavy, it's on the far end of a long lever arm and you'll start feeling every ounce as you work with it ;)

The biggest problem with the original head was that, when I fitted the pieces together, the whole rake would wobble violently with not much effort. It was weird and I figured I would be at greater risk of breaking and also losing useful energy in the rake.

I did find a (hopefully) suitable replacement branch this fall, so hopefully it will work better. Just need it to not be -10F in my garage so I can start working again.

Just curious if anyone has any good information for working with dead/mostly dry nettles. A lot of the info here and online seems to involve green nettles. I picked a bunch of dead ones from the pasture this week and am hoping to make some thread or rope with them.

Is there any way you can contact the manufacturer? That might be your best bet for good info.

Depending on what brand of canner you have, it might already be okay. I have an All-American pressure canner which has a weight and a gauge. The gauge reads 11 PSI when the 10 lb jiggler goes off. I've heard that's somewhat common, but you might want to check. No reason to go messing with it if it's already where you want it.

Abe Coley wrote:

The grain bikes thresher and fanning mill is pretty dope. I want to build one of these and grow a ton of beans.

I've seen those sorts of threshers before, but that's probably the best-filmed one ever! Thanks Catie for providing a link to the plans, I'm going to give those a look over. That would certainly solve one part of the harvesting conundrum.

John Weiland wrote:This will be a somewhat oblique answer.
So now the beans just stay in the feed sack in a cool, dry place until I need some for a meal.  I thresh out just enough for the meal, which usually is not so much, and leave the remainder in the pods within the bag until next time.  

Did you ever have problems with beans sprouting or going moldy in the pods? I've had mold problems every single time I've dried beans on the plants, some worse than others, but I could just not be timing the harvest well. Curious how they've held up being stored like that.