New techniques gaining momentum

4 different Ag topics, 4 different Ag captioned images, 6 days a week, delivered to your inbox at 5 am. A great way to start your Farming day. Join "The Farmers Club" here.

To receive this newsletter in your inbox each day, just register with Farm Tender here.

By Dwain Duxson

New techniques gaining momentum - 3 or 4 years ago, a group of like-minded Australian Grain and Hay Farmers went to the US to get knowledged up on how to make Hay quicker/better.

Many believe the curing process between Cutting and Baling takes too long, leaving us open for things to go wrong, like weather damage. So these guys found a system where the curing process for Hay is something like 5 days maximum. So these Hay Producers tried to emulate that, but it didn't really work, or at least it didn't work under Australian conditions.

But like good Farmers, they persisted and worked out ways to adapt the original model to suit and get a result. Changing a system that has been ingrained into us for decades is not easy to do. Generally, when things start going wrong or not working out as envisaged, we revert back to the old way. 

But from what I am seeing and hearing this Hay making season, is more and more Hay Producers focussing on this new Hay making technique, which essentially gets the Hay into a bale earlier. They now have tools at their disposal (Tedder Rakes, Hay Guard, knowledge, etc.) to change how Hay making is done and, in turn, make a better and more fail-safe product for the Hay buyer. Creating a new system for something that has been done one way for decades requires change merchants to make mistakes in order to find a better way. Hay making is going through some changes. It will be interesting to see how far the boundaries are pushed. Photo credit Tom Manifold.

End of message