Oats for hay

Thinking about sowing a field of oats this year but have several questions that I hope someone c
an answer for me. Located in Central Kentucky. 1. time to sow? 2. Bushels or pounds per acre? 3. Can they be no-tilled into an existing hay field? 4. Approximate growing time? 5. Fertilizer requirement? 6. Best to cut with a haybine or disc mower? 7. Approximate Drying time with teddering. Any advice appreciated.

Well oats for dry hay is hard to get just right. The harvest window is real small. Too early and the heads will be too wet to dry. Too late and you will knock the grain out of the head.

Rate per acre would be about 60 lbs or two bushels if oats only. Usually sow 1-1 1/2 bushels as a nurse crop for alfalfa.

Seeding time?? As early as you can work the ground. Early to mid march around here. You should be able to get going around the first of March down your way.

They usually do not no-till very well as the ground is slower to heat up when not worked.

Fertilizer would depend on the last crop. Following corn we just apply 100 lbs of 0-0-60 at planting. There should be enough nitrogen carried over from the corn.

I would mow them with a mower conditioner or disk mower. They need conditioned

Drying time can be as long as a week to maybe 4 day at the least. If they are thick and heavy they take awhile to dry down.

Oats will usually cut for dry hay mid to late Jun. by July they usually are too mature.

oats dry real slow. wait till they seem to be dry, then wait for at least another day. very hard to tell if truly dry to bale. don't get crispy dry like alfalfa, gets kinda rubbery

Gonna "sow some wild oats" and "makin' hay".

HMMM, sounds like FUN to me. LOL !

I concur with all the comment so far. We use to put up quite a bit. But always worked the ground, disked or field cultivated to get a good seed bed. Too wet after sowing can be a problem, so I would steer clear of no-tilling.

We put the hay up then in wire tied, square bales stored inside.

Expect a little more wastage around the feed bunks.

People around home with string tie balers had a mess in their barns if they tried to carry it over for an extra year in the barn, mice had a field day clipping the strings on bales.

Gene

Best cut in boot stage for highest protein. Seeds heads aren't as much a problem then either.

We always swathed our oats when they were quite green and let them cure in the windrow an extra day or two. When we combined the windrows, we quickly discovered that the test weight was heavier than if we waited until the oats straw was ripe to cut.

Also, the cattle would eat more of the green straw than they would ripe straw. We would put the straw out for bedding and they would eat over half of it, so we'd have to put down more straw.

Only thing different is the universal seeding rate is 3 bu an acre around here, 2 bu if a nurse crop for alfalfa.

It uses 50 lbs of N, but that might be in your soil, too much N and it falls over you don't want that....

You would have to use a very robust chemical program to notill into a hay field, will be impossible to kill the grasses once the oats is up. And you should be planting before the hay greens up, so won't get a good kill before. Would not be my choice, but I usually want the oats. Maybe be good enough for hay, but often when I try good enough it ends up not so good....

Paul

We seed ours early and cut with haybine just as you start to get a little milk in 25% of the seed.

12 ft haybine and as wide a swath as you can handle. bale in 4 days or less depending on weather. usually get 2800Lbs an acre. Seed 1.5 bushels acre with alfalfa. always do it as a cover crop around here or the alfalfa will just blow away. Sandy light soil.

I'm glad someone brought this up because I had questions about oats myself. The only difference is I had thought about combining the oats and then baling the straw. We used to do it when I was smaller but its been so long ago that I cant remember everything about it. Is there any problems in doing combining and then baling the straw? How do you know when the oats are ready to combine? Thank you for all your help.

Several years ago I sold a lady 300 square bales of bailed oats, she said her horses loved it. The next spring she was cussing me like mad for all the mice she had in the barn.

Couple of guys below mentioned the mouse problem- them little suckers just LOVE oats. And whatever you do, don't put the hay on pallets to keep it off the ground- it multiplies the problem by about a hundred, by giving them a handy place to live while they chew on your twines. Bunch of barn cats is a good idea.

We were doing quite a bit of oats around here a few years back, the straw after combining was no trouble to bale, I raked some of it to make windrows for the baler, both round and small squares. The straw has a shiny and slippery surface, one mistake we made was with the JD round baler, an '08 vintage, sileage special, we were using net wrap, and when it was processed, I believe the extra knives or other set were employed it made the stalks much smaller, and those bales were a pain to handle, very delicate. The customer it was sold to was a huge dairy, they were grinding it or putting it into the big mixer for roughage. One of the years the field that was planted in oats on our land here, more nitrogen was added and the stalks were noticeable taller, chest high, that increased the straw tonnage by 50%, but it seems with that comes one drawback, about a week before you turn the key to start the combine some of it would lay down, say after a thunderstorm or something, can't say I've seen it flattened, but that picture perfect field you saw just before, is not so perfect. We put guard extensions on the grain head, they're spring loaded, I thought they worked quite well, as we did not really lose any significant amount of grain, thats not to say it could have been worse, but it seemed to work out well.

I'm not sure as to the official way to check the moisture, (moisture meter ?) but once that field starts to tan, it won't be long. Oats sowed in late March, early April, typically are ready to harvest in July, sometimes late July, early August depending on the weather. You can pull off some grain, take the hulls off check by hand, we had no trouble with grain moisture content that I can recall.

Small squares of oat straw as well as the round bales sold quickly and brought more than hay did, it was a good crop. I know oats like nitrogen, I'm not sure what the rotation is, or whats the best practice to keep nutrients in the soil so it grows well, seems to me you could deplete the soils in a few years. I liked the crop because you harvest when there is a much better chance of drier weather, its warm out and you are not fighting saturated fields like it can be with corn around here, all of it sold immediately, so the farmer I helped with this got his return and profit in a timely fashion. Very little hand work, the small bales sold off the wagons, one guy was taking the wagons and returning them empty. I think the worst of it was when the NH 315 baler ran through some bad twine, what a pain that was, and of course it was in the best field of oats, really nice grain and straw, I had some nice photos of that on a phone that got wet, not sure if I have any others of that field.

I have read about oats here on YT many times now and I find it interesting how different a crop is grown depending on the climate and the type of soil. Where I live it is a common crop and we do it to some extend between wheat. E.g. 2 years wheat, 1 year oats, 2 years wheat. Noone would swath it, just let them cure and combine them like barley or wheat and shred or bale the straw. The straw is a little coarse and not as good for bedding as barley straw but the cows eat it just as well. I have been told the straw should not be given to hogs for bedding.

Yep. Makes for good silage at that stage, too. Last 10 years or so we milked cows we chopped our oats for heifer feed.