Square Bale Density, Length, weight and Moisture Content Questions

First - much thanks for the answers and insight you folks have given to my questions over the past year - most helpful info.

When I read you folk's posts, I get the impression that the best of the best haymakers are on this forum and your end product square bales are terrific. Nice shape, quality hay, correct moisture content and consistent length and weight.

Sooooo.....

No more acres than me and my boys hay, we probably ought to throw-in with the rest of the neighbors and naturally make the stemmiest, crappy bleached, rained on ultra dry/or high moisture content, random length banana bales as possible and by just as happy - LOL!

But.....

One of the goals of this hay deal is to show my boys that there is a better way. We need to engage our brain and from top to bottom know what we are doing and why. There should be no question to which we can't find an answer.

As such...

Quality matters.

We have done a pretty good job do refurbishing our old equipment, are lined up to redo our fields late August...

And next....

We want a very high quality bale, good moisture and a bale shape, length and density that is consistent from bale to bale.

If I could, a few more questions.

Density/bale weight - what do you do to keep your bales consistent in density and weight? Are you using hydraulic or air pressure on your bale chamber to maintain this? Or do you just get off the tractor throughout the day and give the bales a check and adjust the cranks on your baler for density? How do you keep your bales constant in density?

Bale length - what is your secret to keeping the squares at a set length? I think with my 68, the secret is a combo of keeping the baler full of hay, but also slowing down so there are more flakes per bale. More smaller flakes vs a few big flakes that push the bale length to long when you are on the edge of tripping the knotters. On my baler, this is somewhat tricky because he plunger strokes per minute are around 60ish at 540 rpm vs 93 or better for newer balers. How do you keep your bales at a set length all day?

Moisture - we all want to cut on day 1, ted on day 2 and bale on day 3. Sounds like some folks can do it. Someone chime-in and correct me, but I think in the mid Atlantic the high humidity makes this difficult. 4 maybe 5 days seems to work for me - I think! So we use hay/diskbines with rollers to crush/break the stems, ted the hay all in an effort to get the moisture down where we can bale. But moisture being unpredictable - I'm reading that many use some kind of hay preservative. Tell me about hay preservative and it applicators for small square balers. How often do you use it? At what max moisture content do you use it? Do your horse customers frown at the preservative? Does it impact the color of your hay? Does it otherwise enable you to make hay in 3 days? Is it prohibitively expensive? Any wisdom on hay preservative would be much appreciated.

Thanks!
Bill

Square Bale Density, Length, weight and Moisture Content Questions