Today has been very busy. We moved cows in the morning, a pretty routine deal with no major hiccups. I was anxious to do something this afternoon, and we decided it was time to start cutting hay. I'd done prep work last week: I changed the hydraulic oil (25 gallons!) and the radiator fluid. All we had to do was make sure I had all the right tools and enough extra guards to fix a breakdown. I cut the hay yard for practice, to make sure everything ran before we got too far from home. With a top cruising speed of 13 MPH, you don't want to have to backtrack.
There in the stackyard I found the year's first crushing victim. As will become clear as the season progresses, swathers kill a lot of critters. In general, crushing deaths are better and faster than cutting deaths; I don't have to get out and beat crushed animals with a hammer till they stop squirming. The good news: I only noticed this victim--a baby rabbit--because I saw his brother or sister hopping to safety. Horray. Rabbits are the easiest to hit (not that that's a good thing), because they have a freezing instinct when they're in tall grass. It doesn't work very well when there's a 16 foot wall of pointy death approaching. They're also easy to kill because they're so darn fragile. A couple years ago, I managed to stop in time for a little rabbit to escape. I got out and tried to chase it into the clear where it would be safe. Instead, it decided to run straight into the (disengaged--not moving) header of the swather. This should not have been a problem. However, a perhaps little known fact about rabbits is that they have loose and poorly attached skin. My dad told me that he accidentially skinned one once just by picking it up by the skin. This little guy ran straight onto one of the tines of the reel teeth, skewering itself as it continued to try to hop away. I carefully removed the rabbit from its self-inflicted body piercing and set it aside. Maybe it lived?
Other animals are harder to kill in a swather. Deer will usually run, though my uncle, the story goes, once tangled a full grown deer in the header. It wasn't dead yet, either. He always carried a handgun in the swather after that; it must have affected him significantly. I've run fauns--more than I can count--and porcupines through this new swather. It doesn't even hiccup. I never notice. I didn't realize how fast this new swather was (up to 7.9-8 mph in field gear) until my dad told me a few years back that I'd hit a raccoon--a critter usually way too fast and smart to get in the way. I've hit turkeys, nests, birds, maybe even prairie dogs. Just part of the job. The only thing I don't think I've hit is a snapping turtle. That wouldn't be fun.
In the second full field today, there was a success story, though. I saw a bird start to rise from the grass, but there wasn't time to stop. Usually, that's endgame. But this little guy, after a couple seconds, rose up out of the spinning reel! It was a pleasant surprise (for me) and a rude wake-up call for the bird, I suppose.
I probably knocked down 60 acres today. I average 11-12 acres an hour, plus stops to refuel and put more DynaCure in (I'll explain that some other time). Overall, a very successful day. No broken guards or sections, no other breakdowns. Now we just wait a couple days to see if it rains on it. If not, it'll bale by Friday evening, probably. It's alfalfa, so it's really hard to bale well. Again, the subject of another post. Weevel, too: those deserve separate mention as well. All in good time. For now, rest in peace, little bunnies.
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