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Show We All Have 20-20 Hindsight . . . Haying Job's Done But Anctner Year's Ahead By IRA MILLER Farm Electriication Bureau Everybody is "gifted" with 20-20 hindsight. That's the ability to look back at past mistakes and know what should have been done to correct them. So, let's review the last haying season. What can be done to offset the; tons of hay lost to uncooperative rain; the quantities stored after the sun "washed out" much of the protein pro-tein and carotene content; the barns burned because of spontaneous combustion? com-bustion? Whatever is done, adds up to using some type of hay finishing or drying installation. Finishing is done with untreated air; drying, with heated air. Both systems use electric motors to push air through the hay, cooling it to safe storage levels, removing re-moving excess moisture and retaining retain-ing maximum quantities of protein and carotene. Heated air dryers do the job faster and practically eliminate the necessity neces-sity of pre-curing- hay in the field. Equipment for non-heat hay finishers finish-ers generally is lower in cost, consisting con-sisting often of no more than a slatted platform laid cm the floor of a mow, and a central duct down the middle into which air can be blown. Hay, baled or long, is placed on the i platform and air passes up through the slats from the tunnel. However, other unheated air installations are more elaborate as noted from the picture below. The equipment shown consists of three hay finishing wagons. Two motors are used a 2 horsepower motor to blow air from a ground level fan to the head of an overhead duct, and a 3-hp. motor to move the air through the duct. Air is released over each wagon, as desired, and moves down inside canvas enclosures. enclos-ures. Hay is cured from the top down. This method enables the farmer to feed out cured hay more quickly than is possible when he has to wait for a mowful to be finished from the bottom up in the conventional conven-tional way. When necessary, the top layer of hay if raked in the morning morn-ing and partially cured in the field can be finished sufficiently over night to ba fed out within twenty-four twenty-four hours after it has been cut. |
