First Time Baling - Probably Too Wet

First time baling round bales, it's been a terribly wet spring here in NE Texas, wanted to test out my equipment on a small test pasture before getting into my main first cutting on bigger fields. Tuesday the weather was clear and in the low 80's, ground was sort-of dry, so I cut this grass Tuesday afternoon 5/14 with my Kuhn GMD 600 disc mower. It's an old mid 90's mower and the tarp is shot but otherwise it's a good machine.

 

I let the grass it sit all day Wednesday 5/15 and then on Thursday 5/16 I hit it with my hay rakes. This was my first time running them in tandem like this. Weather was clear and sunny and in the mid 80's these two days.

 

Today, Friday 5/17 it was cloudy and humid all morning but by 1:00 the sun finally came out and temps got into the high 80s. My windrows still had a slight touch of dampness but the forecast calls for severe weather tomorrow (Saturday) so I went ahead rolled them up with my John Deere 466 round baler that I acquired this past winter. I set the bale monitor at 60 inches since I'm running the baler with only a 75hp tractor. The tractor ran great but I thought a full 72 inch bale might be a little much for it. When I went to put the hay forks into the bales I could hardly get them in they are so tight and HEAVY. I;'ve handled a lot of round bales with this tractor and these 4x5's are some of the heaviest I've seen, which has me concerned. The surface of the bales felt slightly damp and I think I baled them too wet. Surely they had plenty of time to dry, but the humidity this morning was probably too high for baling today. I ended up with 7 bales and I spaced them outside about 6 feet apart from one another to let them breath. At the end of the day my test was successful, all my equipment ran great, I learned a lot, I just hope I don't have any hay fires as a result.

First Time Baling - Probably Too Wet