Wet weather, dry hay
Spells of poor haying weather are nothing new to New England farmers, although the current stretch has been longer than they typically are. I'm beginning to think the "bailer" typo frequently seen in classified ads is more apt than the proper spelling. Drying hay has been a battle for as long as there has been livestock in New England.
My parent's farm came to them with six acres of salt marsh included in the deal, even though the marsh was almost ten miles from the farm. It used to be common practice for farms near the coast to have some salt marsh because they could harvest the hay from it and mix it in with hay from the farm. One story I heard was mixing it with hay from the farm helped reduce the risk of a fire from too much moisture in the hay. I'm not sure that's true, but I have worked for farmers who would sprinkle salt onto baled hay in the barn if it was suspected to be too heavy with moisture. Apparently it was also simply a good place to get a large amount of feed for the winter.
Another practice I've worked with is adding propionic acid to the hay while baling it. Many balers apply it as a spray, but the baler I rode the kicker-trailer behind applied a dry powder. As I recall, it wasn't pleasant to work with when you were covered with sweat.
It is hard to imagine today, but another way of coping with moisture in hay was the oil-fired hay drier. A wagon load of hay was pulled under a shed and tarps were dropped to keep the heat in. An oil furnace was fired up to provide the heat and fans used to more the air. The first farm I worked on with this setup had, not surprisingly, recently experienced a fire, and little remained. I recently saw another one in Chester, VT, that has been relegated to being a machinery storage shed.
I moved to Colorado in the late 80's, and was amazed at haying there. Hay was mowed into a windrow and then typically left there for anywhere from three to five days. My first few years out there I never saw a rake or tedder - the hay was baled directly from the original windrow. In later years, as the large 4x4x8 bales became common, the windrows were merged just before baling. Baling often took place in the evening so the hay would be slightly damp with dew and therefore less likely to lose leaves to shattering. Here's an alfalfa field I helped mow (for scale, the roads on the left and right side are a mile apart).
While in Austria in the mid 90's, I saw some of the traditional drying of hay on rails and poles, but it was the first place I saw a considerable amount of wrapped round bales (in Colorado dry, baled hay is typically stored outside, uncovered). However, a lot of hay was handled loose. Picture a chopper wagon with soccer netting over the top and a baler's pick-up head at the front. The trailer was pulled down a windrow with the pick-up head stuffing the hay into the the trailer. The unloading was mechanized as well, via a conveyor system, but I didn't get a close look there or inside the barn.
This year, all the hay for our cows was harvested between rain storms, back in early June. The weather was poor in the morning, but by 2pm the sun broke through, so we started in with two mowers and knocked it all down. It wilted some that day and the next morning, and then was merged into larger windrows with a rotary rake, baled, wrapped, and delivered to our winter feeding area by the time I got home from work.
This level of mechanization is wonderful for beating the weather, but it comes at a cost both in haying implements as well as tractors large enough to handle the weight of wet round bales. I find hiring this out works best, particularly since I would only need this equipment a few days each year.
Another consideration has been the amount of waste plastic film that accumulates during the feeding season. Luckily, there are now some recycling options, such as these discussed on the UVM Beef email list.
