Last fall I did an unexpected experiment in dry down on my hay. On my Kuhn discbine on the bottom conditioner roll I spun a bearing and wrecked the shaft. It was a tuff season last year with all the rain and of course this happened when we had a week of sunny weather. So I didn't have time to fix things properly. So I just took the bottom roll out and ran with out a conditioner to at least get some haying done.
What I noticed is it didn't make much difference in dry down. I did take the swath forming shields off my discbine the year before and lay a wide swath. Its about 9 feet wide out of a 10 foot cut and really cuts down on the drying. What I found was that before I raked the hay that was not conditioned ,was not quite as dry as the conditioned hay at the same time since cutting. But I could make up for this by still raking with my rotary rake at the same time. The rake on the non conditioned hay would always make a taller, wider, fluffier swath that would not start to settle near as fast as the conditioned hay(or settle hardly at all). Without all the crimps in the hay the stems were stiffer and held things up better. So after raking my dry down was pretty much the same on the same hay with or with out conditioning.
It was an interesting result from an unplanned experiment. As long as I always raked when the stems were starting to become stiff instead of limp when they are just a bit too wet yet. I ended up finishing the season without the rolls in the discbine. I cut anything from fine grass(which the rolls don't make much difference on anyways). To courser grass, to fields with half alfalfa second cut hay. I could still make dry hay 36-48 hours after cutting depending on the day just like I could with the conditioner rolls in the machine. Now it has me thinking weather I need the conditioner or not.
unexpected experiment
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