Mowing Sudan grass - GIF

[Altair]

Mowing Sudan grass.




Previously:

Silage harvesting - GIF
Wrapping a silage bale - GIF
Tow-behind mower - video
Quad-engine ride-on lawnmower - video and photo
Automated lawnmower rope circular mowing method - GIF

[Frank S]

I've seen some high yield fields of hay, but I guess I've always lived in the wrong part of the country to ever see any that was tall and thick enough to bale directly from the cut row without combining 2 or more rows together, except for the need to turn it over at least once for drying they almost don't even need a windrow rake

[schuylergrace]

I've never seen that used for hay, like they obviously are doing. We always cut sudangrass and sorghum with a combine that chopped it into silage in the field.

About half-way through you can see where some critter trapped in the middle makes a run for it! That reminded me of cutting fields when I was younger, and all sorts of things, from bunnies to rats to snakes would come shooting out in front of the tractor as I got closer to the center and finishing.

[hemmjo]

Ha, yep at 13 seconds, you can see the path of the critter moving from top left to bottom right in the remaining patch.

[BuffaloJohn]

When I was doing hay, I had a mower just like that.

What causes the need to combin rows is the feed rate of the baler. I had a round baler that could run at a pretty decent speed and just worked better if I combine two cuts before feeding. The baler made 5ft x 5ft round bales.

It is important that the cut dries nicely before being raked. That style cutter has a roller crimper which helps drying and it also helps that the cut stays nice and fluffy so it can sit and dry before being raked.

Once that cut dries down, it compresses quite a bit. On a 2 or 3 tie bale, that cut will not need to heve a higher input volume to keep the bailer busy, but if you are making 4x4x8ft bales, probably can combine 3 or even 4 cuts to keep the baler busy.

[BuffaloJohn]

I've never seen that used for hay, like they obviously are doing. We always cut sudangrass and sorghum with a combine that chopped it into silage in the field.

About half-way through you can see where some critter trapped in the middle makes a run for it! That reminded me of cutting fields when I was younger, and all sorts of things, from bunnies to rats to snakes would come shooting out in front of the tractor as I got closer to the center and finishing.

My clue that I ran over something was always the number of buzzards that appeared in the field. Snakes, rodents, rabbits, etc. were all potential buzzard food...