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NE Iowa | In a couple posts Jim mentioned maybe cutting some hay and trying to get it dry before rain tuesday night. Thought I would post something I use to help apporoximate when hay will be dry enough to bale. Hay Wilson posted the table below a couple years ago that shows how much "pan evaporation" it takes to get hay dry enough to bale based on yield and windrow width:
Ton/A 100% 66% 50% 25% 10%
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0.9 T .30" .39" .41" .62" .72"
1.1 T .31" .40" .47" .71" .98"
1.25 T .35" .43" .55" .79" 1.15"
1.5 T .39" .47" .59" .89" 1.38"
1.7 T .42" .59" .68" .98" 1.57"
2.1 T .51" .63" .79" 1.07" 1.97"
2.3 T .56" .70" .83" 1.24" 2.17"
2.5 T .58" .79" .87" 1.28" 2.35"
2.7 T .59" .84 .92" 1.38" 2.43"
2.9 T .61" .94" .99" 1.49" 2.61"
The only website I've found that shows pan evaporation forecasts is AWIS weather and their free forecast only goes out 3 days. This is a link that you can enter your zip code:
http://www.awis.com/cgi-bin/uncgi/zipwx.uncgi
You need to scroll down quite a ways to find pan evaporation but it also shows amount of dew and hours of sunshine. Most times that I've cut hay in the last few years I've checked the pan evaporation prediction and compared to Hay's table and found this to be pretty accurate.
Jim is a little east of me but my forecast shows 0.48" between now and Tuesday night. I think I've got over 2 ton/acre hay out there and can ted it but with the wet ground I don't think I'm going to cut any. A few purple alfalfa blooms don't hurt on beef stock cow hay. I hate rained on hay. Waiting for a better forecast for 1st crop might prevent me from trying to get 4 crops this year. Seems like I get more tonnage if I only cut 3 times and not 4 but some years I still try for 4.
Edited by 17821x 6/2/2013 07:58
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Hay Drying for Jim
