Drought-Ravaged Corn Crop Converted To Silage Bales

Drought-Ravaged Corn Crop Converted To Silage Bales HAY & FORAGE HARVESTING Forage Handling It was so hot and dry in much of Oklahoma this summer that the corn burned like toast One Oklahoma farmer got the most out of his crop by selling it to Devan Harber a cow calf operator 70 miles away near Red Oak Okla Harber and 2 other men converted the standing crop which was never combined into 800 silage bales wrapped in plastic They used a 30-ft Claas rotary mower to cut the corn plants about 6 in off the ground then raked the unshredded stalks into windrows and baled them with 2 Claas Uniwrap round silage balers They also used a 10-ft Claas mower on front of a tractor with a Deere baler on back Harber badly needed feed for his livestock and agreed to pay the farmer to harvest the standing corn for feed They used trailers to haul the balers mowers and a 30-ft rotary hay rake to the farm The wrapped bales fell out of the balers onto big rubber flaps that dragged behind The flaps kept the corn stubble from puncturing the plastic wrap A loader tractor equipped with a revolving grapple fork was used to load the wrapped bales onto a semi truck With the Deere baler which isn’t designed to wrap bales in plastic they mounted a 10-ft section of the Claas mower on front of the tractor and baled directly behind the tractor They plan to wrap the Deere-made bales later this fall The Claas balers make 4-ft dia bales while the Deere baler makes 6-ft dia bales They finished up baling on August 16 Once they were off the field the farmer got a good rain so he was able to immediately no-till plant the field to sudan grass He hopes to make a single cutting of sudan grass within 2 months and then bale it and sell it for feed Then he’ll no-till plant winter wheat in late October Harber was able to harvest about three tons of silage bales per acre He plans to grind the bales and then add soybean hulls and cottonseed meal to add protein Baling the standing stalks without shredding them first turned out to be somewhat of a headache because the corn was tall stringy and tough and tended to plug up the baler “The corn was planted thick so the big windrow made by the 30-ft rotary mower really loaded up the Claas baler It had to run pretty slow ” says Harber “We found that cutting and baling in the same operation with the Deere baler didn’t work as well as cutting raking and then baling silage bales with the Claas balers If we could do it over we would have probably chopped the corn with a self-propelled or pull-type field chopper and then loaded it into trucks But that would have meant a lot of trucking ” Contact: FARM SHOW Followup Devan Harber 12145 S E Cravens Rd Red Oak Okla 74563 ph 918 465-7752

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