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The Joy of
Oats!
(...but were
afraid to ask...)
Part...1
The old timers thought it was the best horse feed. Ask five different
farmers when to plant oats and you'll get a half dozen different answers.
Ask me and I'll tell you 'I dont know'. I do know the small bales were fun
to stack. Oats is one of the slickest crops I've ever had the joy of putting
up. Loading the bales was a different matter. All you had to do was to be
able to stand up on the loose hay on the floor from the previous load -
that's all!
All joking aside
last year was the first year in twenty that we planted oats. I asked several
farmers I knew when was the best time to plant. Each one seemed to have a
different answer. Since we use no-till, I planted just ahead of our
irrigated corn; which left me planting corn in the middle of our great and
plenty-full spring rains. We have a unique 'irritating' watering situation
on our irrigated land because the soil goes from pure sugar sand to the
darkest black gumbo you may have ever seen. I decided to put the oats on the
sand because sand would dry faster if the rains ever came. We had just done
some major work on the sprinklers, and we had hope that they would be more
reliable than they had been the previous year, which was nothing less than a
drought.
So, how much seed
do I plant per acre? Again, I asked around and found some great answers,
most of which were within ... say 50 pounds per acre. Because the intended
oat ground is irrigated and on last years corn stalks to boot, we decided to
plant without putting down starter fertilizer. Tons of trash from the
previous year remained, and we thought the wind would blow the trash off as
soon as we planted, and some of the fertilizer would be on the blowing
trash. I didn't want the swather cutting stalks so I used a stalk shredder
before planting. We use liquid placed on top of the row with this drill
which seems to work fine.
Well I pulled the
drill to the field and put in the bags of seed I had. I was shooting for 70
pounds per acre. I made two rounds and the seed was gone. Seems I had the
drill set wrong,... no, the chart didn't go that high! I reset the drill and
finished the half circle. Two days later the wind came up and blew the trash
off. It would have been hard to find a cleaner field. Alas, there were oats
and, since the trash was gone, a few weeds decided they should venture out
too. Since I wanted to put some oats up in small square bales for horses, I
didn't spray any of the crop.
Well, the corn was planted and the summer looked great. The spring rains had
done their job and everything was green. Then the rain stopped. We couldn't
get a rain to save our o--s. The sprinklers we had just overhauled were
working overtime to keep up as the poor oats were nearing the cutting stage.
A huge hail storm ravaged our wheat, and we were allowed to cut some of the
damaged crop for hay. I had just pulled the swather into a big grass field
and made a few rounds when a small shower came along. The showers continued
periodically throughout the 10 days I was swathing in the grass field. I
finished and moved the machine some 12 miles to cut the wheat hay. I made a
few rounds before dark and before a big shower came along. A week later I
finished cutting and nearly had the balers caught up when I moved to the oat
field.
By now the
oats were well past the prime stage for cutting but would still make good
cow feed. I decided that this time I wasn't taking a chance of even getting
rain on the windrows so I cut a small grassy corner. Just as I was
finishing, a shower came along and wet up the rows. In complete disbelief, I
waited a couple days to finish cutting the oats. I was baling on the last
short rounds when rain drops again hit the windshield of the tractor. Yes
another big shower! Now the year before proved one of the driest on record;
but with all of these showers, I knew this was going to be a great year.
After the oats were stacked the rains stopped. The rest of the summer was
unusually dry!
Believe it or
not!
By Rick Vorce author and co-owner of
www.CountryHay.com - covering local events, writing interesting
agriculture related articles, and providing national horse and cattle feed
listings.
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