Seed Drill Pictures.....

Just thought that I would post some pictures of the seed drill all ready to go...

How do you like the custom made seed bag holder up front??? Pretty cool right?!?!

Nice, justed added hitch to mine....

Bet you can't wait LOL ! Oats at 3 bushels per acre was typical around here. You'll see some results after the first rain, they come up quickly !

nice, will do you a good job

The carrier is OK,but you'll have trouble stepping in there to fill the small seed box now. You're young,so I guess bending over while you're standing that high won't bother you for a few more years.

Ya, but, I am 6'6 and can pretty easily reach all of it... I did have that thought before hand though! Figured I could fill up a 5 gallon pail with seed and just lean over to fill it... TINY box it is!! I think it look good! Hopefully, I can get 150 lbs IN the box, then 2 or 3 bags on top of the boxes, then the rest on that platform... Then just set the bags off to the side of the field when I get there, and come back and reload once or twice.....

I think I am in the money! Can't wait to get them in the ground!!!

Thats what I am hoping! Oats pop up pretty quickly as I recall... That will be good for combating any weeds that might be in there as well...

Mine has a home made, loose hitch. Looks like they were pulling something with a chain behind it!

I need to work on "beefin" it up a little more, then I am going to pull my packer right behind it... Should work well! Same width too!

Hey Bryce..It is so neat how many manufacturers there were that made drills and they vary SOOOO little. Just looking at the pictures and I know where every part goes! A few posts back I said about the sound as you run a drill... as YOU GO listen VERY CAREFULLY. The grain drill makes a very suttle set of sounds and YOU will remember them for life. Please listen. Jefcat

They do crowd them out well, but from my experience more so if broadcast and planted with an increased population vs the drill given the rows and spacing. Obviously increased population may not be desirable for a grain crop, but I plant them like that just for deer plots and inexpensive forage. They sure can crowd weeds out, but once they start to turn, weeds can come back up quickly as the shade is gone, and I saw that in fields that were sprayed. I've seen and helped during harvest time, fields that were planted early or on time, sprayed for weeds, and those that either were not sprayed or planted later, the latter resulted in no straw and lots of grain contamination with weed seed. Our fields for the most part really produced, some better than others, clean straw, good yield. I enjoyed the work from planting to harvest.

Like you I don't particularly care for chemicals, but for good yields and clean straw its hard to get around using weed killer. Maybe you have other seed in there, the oats are a cover crop or I think you mentioned this field is year to year as you don't own it, so you are actually going for a grain crop. It will be interesting to see how it goes for you in your area.


Regardless, hopefully the conditions cooperate more than not, you can control the weeds alternatively, and you enjoy what you are doing, it will be good experience. You'll definitely have some fun and its really unique to see someone your age doing this on a small scale with the old era equipment you have acquired. If I had the means I'd enjoy doing it just the same, as well as putting up a little hay, but without any issues if the results were not so good. That in itself makes it fun, not so much if you have a bunch invested and need that return to be good.

The farmer I used to help, did well with oats here, I believe he made a paycheck on the grain, but the straw was all profit, and it sold fast in round bales and small bales, one guy was buying all the wagon loads for a local feed store and marking it up heavily. I ran the tandem sileage/grain body truck,hauled all of it to the buyer and the gravity wagons. Also delivered all the round bales of straw, as well as any loose or damaged bales, they wanted all of it, was sold before it was harvested actually.

In any event I suspect we shall see how it goes via your posts and I wish you the best of luck with it !

there is nothing better than the sounds of a grain drill working as the squeak squeak across the field

We always pulled a 8 or 9 Ft. Dunham double drum cultipacker with a hitch like that behind our 13 hole John Deere Van Brunt high end wheel grain drill when we planted oats in April. The "cultimusher" made a nice level field with those pesky "Michigan Marbles" punched down out of sight and a nice smooth hay field when the alfalfa/brome seeding was cut the next year and 3 or 4 years to follow. Oats used to be a regular in rotation "cover crop" here when I was a boy on the farm 65 years ago.

Looks real good! Do you just plant whole oats like you would get from a feed store? Or a special seed oat?

I would cut a triangle shaped piece of plywood and lay on top of those boards. The way it looks now, if you happen to step up on there your foot could get caught in those gaps between the boards. Nice looking old drill. Must have been kept inside all its life.

Ya, I was kind of thinking about it... Not sure why I would be up there though! It is a VERY small drill, kind of looks bigger in the pictures...

Yes, I just bought 400 lbs of "recleaned Oats" from a place about 2 hours away... $14 a bag for 50's!!

Compared to if I had bought from the local seed place, it was going to cost me around $350 to seed it, rather than buying just feed oats, which cost me $130...

I will make sure to do that! I was amazed at plowing (had never done that much by my self). As I was going along, I knew what the plow was doing, just by listening to it!!

Until it did this when I found a rock the size of a cow........
<image src="http://forums.yesterdaystractors.com/photos/mvphoto18978.jpg"/>

<image src="http://forums.yesterdaystractors.com/photos/mvphoto18979.jpg"/>

I have one like that which needs restored. The discs and the castings they attach to are rusted out. I figure I could buy a good used one cheaper than restoring it.

We always just plant feed oats works good always got a good crop . If you want to do the right way you buy cleaned seed that said the cows have never gone hungry so we must be doing something right .