Baling second hay cut

Today I started baling my second hay cut.  I decided this time not to rake two windrows into one windrow.  Less movement of the alfalfa would mean less plant loss.

After moving my irrigation pipes, then getting groceries, I started baling a quarter after one pm.  The way things go for me the last few years are: cutting ok, baling not.  Cutting bad, baling ok.   Well, for my second cutting the cutting went fine. So.... how did you think the baling went for me today?

First problem was with my third bale.  For this bale I tried to go faster and when the bale was 58 out of 60, the baler froze. Fortunately I stopped the tractor's PTO before the stopped baler could ruin the PTO again.  I thought I had gone too fast and too much hay stopped the intake.  I cleared the intake.  Baler still stopped.  I saw a lot of hay in the front of the baler closer to the top.  I removed that hay.  Baler still stopped.  Then I saw the second belt on the right had slid over and under the first belt on the right.  Upon closer look the first belt had folded in half against and between two rollers.

I unloaded the bale from the baler.  The end of the bale, where the belts had been located, was missing lots of hay.  Why?  I don't know.  Maybe that caused the belt problem.

I tried and tried to move the second belt to its original location.  It wouldn't move.  I got a crowbar to try to move the two rollers apart slightly so maybe I could slide the belt.  Nope. I needed another person as I needed two people.  Fortunately I was able to talk to Ty several minutes before he was going to leave for the day.  He worked the crowbar and I the belt.  But the rollers wouldn't budge.  After the two of us worked on the same (second) belt, he from the outside and me from the inside of the baler, we were able to move the belt back to the original location.  Then both of us worked on unfolding the half-folded belt.  We un-folded it.  Then back to baling hay.

Now I watched the monitor and the baler's belts as I baled.  The monitor has two bars that indicate the "height' of the right side and the left side of the bale.  One wants the bars to be similar in height.  I also watched the end two belts on each side to see if the second from the end belts were starting to slip under another belt.  If the bars were not similar, or the belts looked to be starting to slip, I made sure to move the tractor towards that side so the majority of input hay was on that side.  This seemed to work.  Up until the 18th bale.

On the 18th bale, closer to the start of the bale, the bars were identical in height, but at higher levels than usual.  I looked at the belts.  The belts had not slid over, but then I saw the rightmost belt looked twisted.  I stopped and checked.  The belt had partially flipped, or twisted.  I unloaded the bale.  I couldn't flip or untwist the belt.  The lacing for that belt was in a location I could reach.  I'll take out the lacing pin.  Then I saw the pin had broke in two.  It wasn't too hard to get half the pin out of the lacing.  The other half of the pin would not come out.  I tried and tried and tried.  Well over a half hour.  Ty was not back home.  I called Donna for a third hand.

Even with three hands the pin did not want to come out. This was the same pin I had put in the lacing back when I had to re-lace the belt at Donna's field when the belt twisted.  To get this pin into the lacing I had to file one end of the pin to make it sharper.  Now I couldn't grab onto that end using a vice grip.  I had to try to grab the other (broken) end of the pin which was inside the lacing.  After much effort I finally got the pin out of the lacing.   With a little effort, on both of our parts, we got a new pin into the lacing and fixed the belt.  Good thing I bought a few extra pins last year.

I had planned on taking the two hours to move the irrigation pipes for the evening.  Since that was lost in order to fix the belt twist I let the pipes remain in the same location.  The other thing going on is the rain in the weather forecast.  Rain is forecast starting tomorrow.  I want to be done with the baling before it rains.  So I continued baling until dark.  For half the last bale I had to use the tractor's lights to see in order to continue baling.  I ended up baling 24 bales today.   I have one to two hours left to bale tomorrow.  I should be able to do that before the rain comes.    Unless more problems come up.

Initially I was concerned the hay would not dry quickly for me to bale.  That was wrong.  The hay dried quickly.  While still kind-of green the hay is very dry.  It breaks up.  I get lots of chaff when baling. Much more than usual.  After unloading each bale I had to spend time to remove the chaff from the back of the baler.  If I have time before the rain comes I plan to take the pickup, a shovel and a rake to near each bale and gather the pile of chaff from the ground so I can place it in the barn to feed the cattle this Winter.

First belt movement and folding.  Views from the outside and insde the baler.

This is the bale I unloaded after the belts moved and folded.   It was a size of "58".  After I re-baled the hay it was a size of "46".  The hay broke down even more when re-baling it, and "12" (a foot) was left spread on the ground.

See the right side of the bale. Why no hay is there is a mystery.   But that is most likely why the second belt wanted to move over from the slanted area to the smaller area.

The second belt twist.

The lacing and the part of the pin I had a very hard time to remove.

The bale when the belt twisted.  The bale is small and looks even.  Why did the belt twist?

Chaff inside the baler.  Other times, even much more chaff.

For four to six bales part of the netwrap tore off the bale and stayed on the belt when the bale unloaded.  Why?  I don't know.  But I made sure to remove the netwrap from the baler and belt.

The grass is growing already even though I had cut this area Tuesday afternoon.