swather in sunflowers?

Dave H (MI) · Dec 2, 2015

Just watching the end of a really bad movie and they were pretending to harvest sunflowers. Of course the sunflowers in the picture were green with bright yellow flowers but they had a Versatile swather and the sunflowers were laying in a row to dry behind it. Forgive my ignorance, never grew sunflowers. Is there EVER a situation where you would cut them in a swath and leave them to dry?

GregCO · Dec 2, 2015

Nope. Not around here. Let them stand in the field until dry just like feed corn and then go get them. And have a fire extinguisher handy. Really dusty and oily. The neighbor next to me puts out at least one fire on his combine a year during harvest. I guess if they were going to be chopped into a silage mix they may get mowed and rowed.

Greg

moresmoke · Dec 2, 2015

Not to my knowledge. Usually flowers are planted fairly late, in the hopes a frost will finish them off. Today there are also dessicants that can be used.

Bob · Dec 3, 2015

My farm is about 3 hours SW of Winnipeg, where the Versatile swathers were made, and the renter's oil sunflowers are still "outstanding in the field" because we had a late frost and he needs them to be as dry as possible before they are harvested because he is not set up to dry them.

The scenario that was put for by another poster that they may have been intended to be part of a silage mix seems plausible, although I have never actually seen that done (swathing them green) and I don't even think you could actually do it with the typical heavy stand that gets grown around here.

Dick2 · Dec 3, 2015

The stalks taste terrible; can't see why anyone would put them in silage, as the cattle probably wouldn't eat them. If the sunflowers are close to ripe, there wouldn't be many seeds left in the head after they were run through a swather as the seeds fall out of the head quite easily and would be lost.

Must have been some movie maker's idea; nothing to do with reality - but isn't that the way most movies are made?

RM-MN · Dec 3, 2015

Most people in the world live in cities and don't get to see what a harvest looks like. Many of them don't know what a ripe sunflower looks like so the wouldn't understand the crop or the harvest of it so to let them know that the crop is sunflowers they need to have the big yellow blossoms on them. Since you all know what happens (well you do, don't you) when you run a green crop through the combine it should be obvious that you wouldn't show those big yellow flowers being combined so you have to wing it a bit and swath them. The show's producer probably has never seen the harvest of anything but money off the trees so they wouldn't know that what they are showing is wrong either.

Nebraska Cowman · Dec 3, 2015

Only for the movies I think. The old saying comes to mind. "Don't believe everything you hear and only about half what you see"

Kickinbull · Dec 3, 2015

I've planted sunflowers into a mix with corn and sorghum for silage but in a row. Cattle ate it all.

sammydwm · Dec 3, 2015

Sunflower silage is pretty good stuff from anything I have heard.

Lazy WP · Dec 3, 2015

If you trun cattle out on tender Sunflowers, they will grub them into the ground. I have seen certain cattle hunt them out, at the right times. Other times, you can't get a critter to touch them.

Andy Martin · Dec 3, 2015

(quoted from post at 02:34:45 12/03/15) The stalks taste terrible; can't see why anyone would put them in silage, as the cattle probably wouldn't eat them. If the sunflowers are close to ripe, there wouldn't be many seeds left in the head after they were run through a swather as the seeds fall out of the head quite easily and would be lost.

Must have been some movie maker's idea; nothing to do with reality - but isn't that the way most movies are made?

I guess it's in a person's taste, I don't like the taste of silage, either.

Ande · Dec 3, 2015

Agree with Bob and only 80mi south of Winnipeg Bob, but this is how the movie industry continue to blow smoke. Its really a joke, we were raising sunflowers back in the 60s and never have I ever seen anyone swath sunflowers in my 60 yrs. The movie industry need to find the hero's and wonderful family story like the Walton's. They don't get it.

NEKS · Dec 3, 2015

Dad was saying one time, only thing that grew to put in the silo in the dry 30's was sunflowers. He never said how the cows liked it.

db4600 · Dec 3, 2015

We are at the point where we have lost most of our folks who lived through the 30's, but I remember the man that grew up on the homesteaded farm in the 30's. He said they would turn the cattle loose any where they could find feed. Cattails, willows, and highland brush. In the case of the brush (hazel and prickly ash) he said they would cut it and pile it. The cattle would work over the pile until it was down to the course and heavy sticks. None of these things would make better silage than Sunflower. Now, that being said, I know little about sunflowers and the movie scene described definitely leads to much conjecture.

coshoo · Dec 3, 2015

Dad planted sunflowers in with corn for silage one time- cows got through the fence and got into it when it was just about ready to chop, and the 60 cows and big heifers working all night on a 10 acre field managed to pretty much wallow it all down, to where we couldn't harvest it. That was the summer before milk price went in the tank in '58, after which we didn't have enough money to do much of anything. Sold out the herd in '61, so he never tried it again.

Dick2 · Dec 3, 2015

My cousin and I went to a movie many years ago about Custer when he left Ft. Lincoln in ND to go to the battle against the Indians. The early scenes showed the troops leaving the fort with big snow capped mountains in the background. Ft. Lincoln was (is) on the rolling prairie without a big mountain in sight. Guess the movie makers had never been to ND to check the landscape. Lack of reality spoils a movie for me.

Ozlander · Dec 3, 2015

Like the mountains around Dodge City in Gunsmoke.

JimB2 · Dec 3, 2015

My brother used to throw a handful of sunflower seeds in the planter with the silage corn. One year when it was a really dry summer the sunflowers out grew the corn and had really large heads. The only problem was that every deer in the neighborhood was in that corn field every evening.

JimB

swather in sunflowers?

Dave H (MI)

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GregCO

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moresmoke

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RM-MN

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