Can you Ted hay with dew on it?

If drying conditions are lousy and rain is coming or hay is heavy may ted a second time. This is for any type, grass or legume or mix, if lots of legume use slow rpm and do it with dew on. Often times you only have a few hour window to do it right.

How many times should I ted for hay?

Saving the hay Hay should be cut when dry at the end of a sunny day when sugar levels are at their highest and tedded immediately after cutting. In good weather the grass is tedded twice daily and in very good sunny, breezy weather haymaking should be achieved in 3 to 4 days.

Is tedding hay worth it?

Tedding offers many benefits to farmers and is advantageous for drying hay. Tedding hay after cutting mixes the crop to break up clumps of forage and distribute the hay over a field’s surface. These clumps of hay break up more effectively after two to four hours of wilting than immediately after mowing.

How many times can you tedder hay?

Hay mowen early in the morning can be tedded in the same afternoon as long as the mowen swath is dry on the top surface. It may require a second tedding the next day to speed up the drying process. Tedding can be used anytime during field curing, and it typically can reduce your field-curing time by up to 12 hours.

How long is hay good for?

Storing Hay You can store hay indefinitely if the stack is managed correctly; although, in humid climates, using hay within three years of harvest is ideal. Hay growers need to bale it at correct moisture levels because if it’s baled too damp the hay will generate heat, which leads to molding.

Can you cut hay in the rain?

When plants are cut for hay, they do not immediately die. As long as moisture is above 40 percent, they will continue to respire – exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide – a process that burns energy. Sometimes, rain will not reduce hay quality significantly if the hay has adequate time to dry and cure prior to baling.

Is a tedder necessary?

Tedders are intended to be used on crops while they are still higher in moisture and pliable. A crop that is overly dry should not be tedded due to loss of leaf material. So, for most farmers, a tedder is a needed implement.

Why is it called a tedder?

A horse-drawn implement for fluffing hay after it was cut, and primarily after windrowing. It was intended to stir up and turn over extra heavy hay to help the part near the ground to dry, or to help the drying of cut grass that had been dampened by an unexpected rain.

Can you Ted alfalfa?

To dry quickly, alfalfa should be laid in as wide a swath as possible, Undersander says, and tedders will do that. Tedding alfalfa shortly after cutting, when the crop is typically about 75% water, helps minimize leaf loss. “If you ted 24 hours or so later, your leaf loss is pretty high with alfalfa.”

Why is it called a Tedder?

Can you feed old hay to cows?

As a guideline, hay made in 2012 should not be more than 25 to 30 per cent of the forage in the ration for cows in early- to mid-pregnancy, and 15 to 20 per cent in late pregnancy. Depending on quality, year old hay may not be suitable to include in lactating cow or newly weaned calf rations.

Does old hay have less sugar?

The only way to know the nutritional (including sugar/WSC/starch) content of hay is to have it analysed – you cannot tell the nutritional content by the colour of the hay, and old hay doesn’t necessarily have less sugar than new hay. TLS recommends having ESC analysed, rather than “sugar” or WSC.