What is the best way to deal with combined oats swaths?

Question

Dropped oats straw last fall for a cattle farmer to bale! It never dried enuf to bale last fall so it laid out all winter & now I’m trying to decide the best & fastest way to deal with it so I can seed the land! Can’t burn it cuz of fire ***! What is your ideas!

Answer

Have used a brush cutter behind tractor to blow it back out. I wonder if a stalk chopper would work?

Answer

Can you run a forage head on a chopper and get it loaded and off the field? Seems like a stalk chopper would cut it up but still leave it pretty much windrowed. If your in a fire ban, is it dry enough to bale? Too thick to spread it back out with a tedder, then use a stock chopper? Just some ideas

Answer

The cattle farmer would like to bale it but he will not take it wet & I would like to seed it within 2 weeks! Was gonna try spreading it with a heavy harrow but not sure if that will work or not! Bales are very erratic with moisture cuz I think the bottom of the swaths r still wet! Range anywhere from 5%-50% moisture

Answer

Can you use a rake to tip it over to dry out the underside like has to be done to dry hay out after it gets rained on? Figured the baler would be an easy way to move the material off the field even if it wasn't useable.  Maybe a stalk chopper or bush hog, then a heavy harrow to drag it out. Need some way to load it into a bale processor and open the chute wide open and blow it out like when they bed cattle pens from the fence line.

Answer

We have done this before in same situation.  With heavy harrow, adjust your height so that the tines are dangling all the time but low enough to catch most of the swath, and harrow slow at about 4-5mph at 90 degrees to the swaths.  Idea was to try to get the harrows to clean out mostly before it hits the next swath.  If your harrows are too low it will fill up and leave huge piles to deal with.  They have to clean out every time.  Some of the wet bottom of the swath would be left behind.  Then leave it for a day or two to dry out and then harrow again as you normally would on the angle.  This worked for us.  We have also ran the combine up and down the rows of straw if the straw is not too fine and if the pickup would pick it, and if straw not too wet.   Closed the top sieve and turned the fan up to keep everything going out the back.  Dump what makes the hopper in a slough. This works great too, but you put a few hours on the combine.  Cattle guys always think they should get straw for free cause you don’t have the straw to deal with.  But unless the cattle guy is paying you $25 a bale, you are losing badly because he is hauling all your organic matter and Nitrogen and Phosphorus over to his place and depleting your land.  Where I farm we are starving for organic matter after generations of summerfallow depleted our soil.  After you tell them you want $25 a bale to replace the lost nutrients as fertilizer, they usually don’t call you anymore and then you won’t have to deal with this problem ever again.

Answer

Have the cattle farmer flip it with a rake.  With the 20 mph south winds the last 2 days it’ll be dry enough to bale before the weekend.

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Have seen guy's around here using a forage chopper.  Just point the spout at the sky and let it scatter. Or V rake and bale, unfortunately neither method is free.

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We heavy harrow, at a high speed in dry conditions, which really busted up the straw  (had heavy wheat and barley straw).  Or high-speed disc, like a Protil.  We're  farming in the Yorkton area.

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What is the best way to deal with combined oats swaths?

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