Seeding for oats as cover crop with hay

I'm looking for a seeding rate (lb/acre) for oats as a cover crop for an alfalfa/timothy mix to calculate how much I need.

As well, I would like to know the approximate yields for oats as a cover crop -- I have a few buyers lined up and I need to know how much I can expect. I will be seeding about 30 acres on high-producing land that had beans on it last year.

Thanks

are you seeding down as a cover crop or as a nurse crop?

sounds like you're planning on seeding the oats at the same time as the hay mix as a nurse crop to give the soil some weed suppression before the alfalfa and timothy get growing?

-Jameson

If you plant oats for grain, you plant 3 bu per acre. I'll plant a plow-down blend with this and get a good if much delayed alfalfa/clover field by fall.

If you plant just enough oats to be a nurse crop to shade weeds early, protect from erosion, cut it ealy as forage and get the best hay crop you can, you can get by with 1 bu per acre.

If you want to harvest the oats as grain, bale the straw, and hope to get a delayed but pretty good hay crop growing, you plant about 2 bu per acre. This is a good compromise.

Many around me have gone to planting pure oats, harvest it, and then plant the hay crop in late August/ early Sept to pick up the fall rains and a good full crop of hay next year. The weeds and erosion issues are much smaller in fall 'here' but we get enough fall rain so it works well 'here'. Keeps a lot of wheel traffic off the new hay crop, lets both crops do their full potential, etc.

Oats can yield less than 30 bu an acre, or more than 120 bu per acre. Soil fertility, and when you plant it (early = good, needs cold starting weather), how the hot weather hits it, and moisture conditions really make a very, very wide difference, so with no idea where you live or what type of soil you have or how early you plan to plant it (early helps oats; later helps the hay seedlings) there can be no useful answer to your yield question.

--->Paul

I'm in eastern Ontario and it will be planted as a cover crop. Soil is clay/sandy loan, good producing land. I will be seeding in the spring, not fall, and getting a cutting of hay off is not important for this year.

Based on seeding at 3bu/ac and getting an average yield of 100bu/ac (from what I've read) for straight oats, if I only plant 1.5-2bu/ac I can probably expect about half of that yield, so between 30-60bu/ac.

I think that sounds about right.

Where have you been?

In sw Pa, we found much more than 1 bu/acre choked
out the alfalfa. we did 1.5-2, but it does much
better with 1 bushel.