Corn stalk bales

I"m going to be short on hay this winter and in the past I have fed a few corn stalk bales with some luck. I have beef cattle. We rent out our land and we buy our feed. The farmer that rents our land had beans on our land but has corn still standing. I have two options. I called an add in the paper about custom stalk baling and they would cut and bale for $15.00 per bale Net wrapped. My other option is that I cut the stalks with my batwing mower than have the farmer who rents our land bale the stalks with his round baler. His baler only has twine. If I did this what would be a fair price. I would be able to store the bales inside. I understand that both of these plans would require me to ask the farmer who rents our land if I could bale stalks on one of his other fields.

Any input is appreciated

A Batwing mower with sharp blades at 6 mph will do a good job of chopping stalks. Wheel rakes work best for raking. If your storing them inside and not moving them around a lot then twine will work fine to. Make sure to put on extra twine. I get $30 a bale for chopping raking and baling. Its a 5x6 bale and they are really tight. When you cut the wrap off of my bales, they explode.I use netwrap. The one way to go if the sit outside. How many are you making and what size and baler will be making them.

15 bucks a bale is a steal to get it all done and netwrapped. With my overhead based on a rolling 5 year average I've got over 12 in a bale before returns to my labor, management, and profit. Thats in hay, not stalks. With what the last stalk field did to my belts I'd want at least 15 just to come roll it.

Corn stalk bales with twine are just a disaster waiting to happen. If you have to move and haul them you will lose half or more of them.
Second: You are going to have to pay him for the stalks you need. There is a nutrient value for corn stalks. In 150-bushel corn, there are 75 pounds of nitrogen,22.5 pounds of phosphorus, and 180 pounds of potash. This adds to $15 per acre for nitrogen, $4.95 for phosphorus, and $28.80 for potash, for a total of $48.75 per acre ($11.43/ton).

Also stalks do not have as much feed value. Corn stalks are generally considered to have 80 to 90% of the energy of mixed grass and legume hay per pound of dry matter but only 20 to 30% of the protein. You would be better off buying low grade hay or even straw for them. It is cheaper per pound of dry matter/protein than corn stalks.
You can really stretch out your hay if you feed supplemental grain or by products.

Are any corn stalks close enough that you could graze them until bad weather? I have Beef cows on rented ground that I keep in with a single strand of high tensile fence and a good electric charger.That is the best way to use corn stalks to help out on short feed.

The $15 doesn't sound bad at all, and doesn't interfere with your neighbor's workload....

I'd guess you would pay the neighbor a bit for the stalks themselves.

My understanding is cornstalks take more N than they add to decompose so while the stalks might contain N, they don't add any to the soil in a reasonable timeframe. But you'd want to pay a little for the P & K being removed.

--->Paul

I feed cornstalks to my beef cows. I do it on shares with a friend of mine, my stalks, his equipment, we split 50/50. My cows get fat off them, they may be lower in protien, but for the amount they eat they get plenty. I end up with ALOT of bedding from the actual stalk which they dont eat much of, but we ussually pile thses with the manure for a year to break them down and end up spreading it as a o0mpost. We also use twine, plastic, with a newer new holland baler and I have no issue with the bales falling apart, ice on the bales is my only issue in the winter.

Can you just run a hot wire around the field(s) and turn 'em in? Makes a heck of a good winter pasture.

Allan

Jackson, I second what Allen said!!! I do add this by saying fence in the bean ground too.
Winter Wheat and Corn stalks have been a staple on the High Plains for decades!! Yearlings are a little slow on figuring out how to clean up whole ear corn, but cows! only need about 10 minutes.
A single hot wire fence is simple and works great, that is a lot cheaper than baling up the stalks @ 15/roll. Run those Mamas till late winter, pull them and start farming. Hope this helps
Later,
John A.

Couldn't disagree with you more about raking them with a wheel rake. I tried it on one field last year because I was in a hurry. WHAT A MISTAKE! They hung up and wrapped on the wheels,all the heavy stuff was on the outside of the windrows and plugged on the outside edge of the baler pickup. I lost twice as much time trying to bale them as I gained over raking them with my Kuhn gyro rake. I've always used the Kuhn on them and went back to it last year after that one field disaster and used it again this year.

I do that as well, plow once around the field the cows don't like to cross the furrow/ black dirt, they don't even get near the wire often.

The one problem is in a northern wet cold climate like mine, you really struggle with tillage & drying out, warming the ground for next year's crop.

The renter might not like the possible reduced yields the following year. Or at least the different tillage.

--->Paul

milo stalks are used a lot around here. However you have an issue with high prussic acid content that will kill cattle. Around here you have to wait until frost killed the stalks/milo and they have turned brown. Then wait longer as they dry out and the prussic acid content goes down. Probably be another month before ours would be ready if I was going to do it.

You definitely need to run a test on them for feed value and prussic acid. Probably best to cut some stalks by hand and test it before you cut and bale. I wouldn't buy any already baled without a feed test. Besides you need to know the feed value so you know how to properly supplement it.

(quoted from post at 09:58:20 10/27/10) Couldn't disagree with you more about raking them with a wheel rake. I tried it on one field last year because I was in a hurry. WHAT A MISTAKE! .

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You must rake with the wrong type wheel rake!!!!!!!! My H&S Hi-capacity bi-fold(not fold in the air type) that has the rake wheels on the inside of the frames instead of rake wheels behind frame will rake corn,milo or any other crop with no problems.

Yep,I've got a Gehl V rake that pulls the wheels. I'll NEVER use it in stalks again. Absolute agony.

(quoted from post at 11:30:15 10/27/10) milo stalks are used a lot around here. However you have an issue with high prussic acid content that will kill cattle.

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My veterinarian told me than any hay crop such as Milo,Sudan or Johnson grass that is prone to prussic acid poisoning when baled after 1 month of storage the prussic acid will dissipate from the bale hay and will no longer be a problem.

Nitric poisoning never goes away in standing or baled crop.

No advice, just a little nostalgia. When I was a kid we used to bale the corn stalks in small square bales. We would feed the stalks(we called them shreds) to the dairy cows and then later after they picked through them we would kick what was left through the stanchions for bedding. Then the next day we would be loading from the gutter the shreds that were mixed in with you know what into the manure carrier. When full, I would give it a good push then hang on to the carrier for a free ride out to the manure pile. If you jumped off in the right spot and tripped the bucket to dump, you could snap it back in place and have a free ride back to the gutter for some more work. )

Disagree all you want but everyone uses them around here. How ancient is your rake? I rake at 9 mph and take about 8 rows at a time.