Alfalfa: Encyclopedia II - Alfalfa - Harvesting

Alfalfa - Harvesting

When alfalfa is to be used as hay, it is usually cut and baled. Loose haystacks are still used in some areas, but bales are much easier to transport. Ideally, the hay is cut just as the field is beginning to flower. When using farm equipment rather than hand-harvesting, the process begins with a swather, which cuts the alfalfa and arranges it in windrows. After it has dried, a tractor pulling a baler collects the hay into bales. There are three types of bales commonly used for alfalfa. Small "square" bales--actually rectilinear, and typically about 40 x 45 x 100 cm (15 in x 18 in x 38 in)--are used for small animals and individual horses. The small square bales weigh between 25-30 kg (50-70 pounds) depending on moisture, and can easily be hand separated into "flakes".

Cattle ranches use large round bales, typically 1.4 to 1.8 m (4.5 to 6 feet) in diameter and weighing up to 500-1,000 kg. These bales can be placed in stable stacks, placed in large feeders for herds of horses, and unrolled on the ground for large herds of cattle. The bales can be loaded and stacked using a spike on a tractor that pierces the center of the bale, or with a grapple (claw) on the tractor's front-end loader.

A more recent innovation is large "square" bales, roughly the same proportions as the small squares, but much larger. The bale size was set so that stacks would fit perfectly on a large flatbed truck.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Harvesting", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki