The Rural Voice, 2003-02, Page 12Robert Mercer
Making hag faster and better
Robert
Mercer was
editor of the
Broadwater
Market Letter
and
commentator
for 25 years.
If I had been at the farm
equipment show in Red Deer last fall,
I might have known about the
"macerator". This Manitoba -built
innovative piece of new equipment
had a production run of about 100
units. For the current year the
manufacturer is expected to aim for
300.
This potential addition to your
machinery shed is a lot more than just
a super hay conditioner. It doesn't
quite chew things up or knead them
as the dictionary suggests — it does
however make them softer. So when
a local farm forage program had two
Vancouver Island farmers on the
program to talk about their
experience with a macerator, I had to
sit in and listen.
I hope this column doesn't sound
too much like a commercial plug
because it is not, but enthusiasm is
catching, especially when you can
start to look at three-day weather
forecasts rather than five-day
forecasts in order to make hay in B.C.
Bryce Rashleigh of Saanichton
purchased one of the first units in
partnership with his neighbour
Wayne Joslin, and found that in 2002
each batch of hay was made within
three days or Tess. And that was
100,000 square bales put up for
commercial sales to the horse trade.
Here, hay has a retail value at $8 a
bale for top quality and down to $5 to
$6 for poorer quality in the Victoria
area, so the difference in quality can
soon pay for equipment that clips off
a day or two of production time due
to the faster dry down.
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8 THE RURAL VOICE
Bryce said that the macerator rips,
opens, nips, cracks and squeezes as
well as partially scuffing off the wax
on stems thus allowing for crop
moisture to escape at a quicker rate.
The original work and patent on
the equipment was undertaken by the
Prairie Agricultural Machinery
Institute (PAMI). It is now produced
and already modified from the
original, by AgLand Industries of
Manitoba.
The macerator has two sets of
rollers. In the front there is a pick up
reel that feeds the first set of rubber
intake rollers where the swath is
flattened before going to the steel
patterned rollers. The top steel roller
is driven at a different rate to the
bottom roller. Both sets of rollers are
held under pressure by air bags at
about 30 psi, and no springs are used.
Bryce said that they have, on
occasion had the unit working a 20
hour day with shifts and grease
breaks from 6:00 a.m. to 2:00 a.m.
with crop drying occurring all the
time. The basic time from cut to bale
is 60 to 72 hours. They find it is
possible to tedder the hay three times
a day, as the dry -down is so fast
when turned from the swath to an
uncovered stubble gap which has
dried and is waiting for the hay to be
laid on top again.
The machine is not perfect. Bryce
and Wayne have had to suggest some
modifications as they worked with it,
and one point of operation is that the
fields must be clean because foreign
objects might get into the mechanism
and cause time loss and problems.
The tractor must have at least 60
to 70 hp., and the operator must be
able to make even swaths, especially
on the row ends and corners.
If you didn't see a model at your
provincial or local farm equipment
show this year, take time to look next
year if you are in the large scale
quality hay -making business. As
Bryce told the forage seminar, this
piece of equipment has changed hay-
making more than anything over the
last 26 years. Most of all he says "it
has dropped my stress level".0