Oats VS Rye Grass To Overseed For Hay

Hello everyone!

So I'm planning to overseed four of the fields that I'm making hay on this year. Partly to try and get ahead of some of the weeds that grow on them, mostly because none of them have any "good" stands of desirable grass, its basically just mixed pasture grasses and weeds. This is on ground I'm leasing on a yearly basis, thus I'm not wanting to invest a lot of money in this. I mainly want a crop thats hardy and idiot-resistant, that'll give me a good quantity of hay (most people I sell to just want "clean" and "cheap") and be very cost effective for the aforementioned reasons.

Basically, the plan is to disk, broadcast seed, and disk the seeds in. I have an 8' pull type disk harrow and a rotary "cone" three point spreader.

Its looking like oats would cost a fraction as much to plant as the rye grass, and other things being equal, I'm leaning that way. My questions:

1) Could I expect two cuttings off of the oats (I've been told that I could off of the rye)
2) Does anyone have firsthand experience doing this, or something similar? Your advice and thoughts on this would really be appreciated. Thank you!

Standard practice for back when we still rotated the crops was to disk, then either drill or broadcast a mixture of orchard grass, maybe some brome grass, alfalfa, and oats for the cover crop. Oats were harvested in July, then the field was mowed down and the straw was baled. I'm sure there is probably a market for oats straw in your area, and probably even a market for the oats. You do want to drag a spike tooth harrow over the field after sowing the seed. Harrowing incorporates the seed into the soil.

Dad and most of the neighbors showed oats and next years hay ground like Rusty Farmall said. We used an IH endgame seeders, we showed into old corn ground, would leave an un-disked row every 8-9 corn rows to drive the seeder wagon by. Then we'd disk the entire field again, then pull the peg tooth harrow over the field because it would either be hay ground or hog pasture, and get lots of traffic.

We needed some straw but didn't have that much storage room so we didn't clip the oat stubble, just raked up straw that had gone thru the combine. The oats were ripe when combined, they did not grow after being cut. Not sure if they would regrow if cut while green. Normally by fall we had a pretty good crop of hay started but didn't cut it till the following summer, typically in June.

Broadcast seeder is the way to show oats and hay. Our endgate seeder had separate hoppers for oats and grass seed, more consistent sowing rates for both. Plus you can cover lots of ground in a hurry. Working with the neighbor and Dad in the seeder wagon and me on the tractor pulling the wagon we could cover 80 acres in an easy day. We'd disk the ground ahead of time, neighbor would start disking in right behind the seeder wagon, I'd start disking as soon as we were done seeding. Endgate seeder covered about a 25 ft swath at 5 mph, so about 15 acres per hour.

Just what rustyfarmall and Dr.EVIL have said, but also to confirm that oats will not re-grow, whether cut green or ripe. One cut only! The method was also our usual one for establishing a hay field here in Scotland.
What you could do, though, is cut the oats green, with a nice grassy bottom, and bale and wrap for arable silage. Cows absolutely LOVE it. Any bovine neighbours you could sell to?? Jim

Lanse
I forget do you live in Ohio as your profile shows? For some reason I thought you moved to Texas. If so it's too late IMHO to plant Ryrgrass for a decent crop of hay so of the 2 choices I'd pick Oats.

Oats will regrow, if cut early enough. Unless you're in an area with extremely low humidity, think long and hard about oats for hay. They make good feed, but are very difficult to get dry. They're better suited for green chopping, ensiling, or high moisture (wrapped) bales, if used as forage.

As Jim said, if still Here in Texas, the window for planting rye or oats was September-October. Don't waste your seed/labor now.

I'll be very surprised if an
8' disc does more than just
roll over old sod.

Your geography and climate affects this also. Do a search of publications from your state Ag Bureau and state Universities Ag Dept near you for best choices for hay species for you, including your soil types. Often real good publications for hay fields and pasture improvement. If you are in a seasonal climate, consider frost seeding too now. I do this with red clover in hay fields, when freeze and thaw cycles arrive and cold mornings have that really cracked and crusty soil surface, allows success in broadcasting seed. Red clover also adds beneficial nitrogen to soils.