silage baleing

This is my first post.  I am from eastern Iowa and a cow calf man on a small very hilly farm here.  All of the crop production here is used to feed the cows and calves.  Calves are sold at 700 to 800 lbs. In recent years as I have researched various topics, I am often lead to this site and have found it a good source of comment and information.

 

This farm is all hay or pasture with the exception of corn raised for silage for storage in pit silo.  I have been working with cover crops and am starting to experiment with no-tilling warm season annuals into decling hay stands after first cutting of hay.  Bale wrapping and some "silage" bales are being made in this area, and I had my first ones made last year from a very heavy cover crop.

 

I am now considering getting a "for real" silage baler.  The local dealer just started selling Mchale, and I am interested in the V660 model.  I now have a JD 535 in good condition, but am loath to even attempt silage with it.  Most of the people in this area are skeptical about trying to produce silage with a conventional round baler.

 

I think the general impression of people here is that if the hay is too tough to bale, it can be wrapped and made into silage.  From my research so far, it appears this tough hay may not in fact be wet enough to produce proper fermentation etc..

 

Also it seems that the proper way to prepare the material for baleing is to cut and lay it out wide for quick wilting, and then to rake it into proper windrows when it has dried to maybe 40 to 60% moisture for baleing.  This would probably rule out the use of my Vee rake to move this wet material.  Is it such a bad idea to just attempt to make proper width windrows with the diskbine and pick up the material directly out of that windrow?  Years ago, I think that is the method much used for chopping to fill the old tower silo's.

 

Hopefully, the baler I choose would be suitable for both silage and dry hay.  I might like to include an in chamber moisture tester, which I understand won't read above 40 %, but it might still be a help with dry hay, or be an alert about hay becoming too dry for silage.

 

If the ideas outlined above could be made to work, I would probably discontinue corn silage production and rely on summer annual silage bales and dry hay or hay silage bales for wintering the calves, and use some combination of lesser quality hay or silage for winter cow feed.  Any comments, recomendations or observations about any of the above would be appreciated.  Thank you

silage baleing