The Joy of Oats!

(...but were afraid to ask...)
Part...1
The old timers thought it was the best horse feed. Ask five different farmers when to plant oats and you'll get a half dozen different answers. Ask me and I'll tell you 'I dont know'. I do know the small bales were fun to stack. Oats is one of the slickest crops I've ever had the joy of putting up. Loading the bales was a different matter. All you had to do was to be able to stand up on the loose hay on the floor from the previous load - that's all!

 
 

All joking aside last year was the first year in twenty that we planted oats. I asked several farmers I knew when was the best time to plant. Each one seemed to have a different answer. Since we use no-till, I planted just ahead of our irrigated corn; which left me planting corn in the middle of our great and plenty-full spring rains. We have a unique 'irritating' watering situation on our irrigated land because the soil goes from pure sugar sand to the darkest black gumbo you may have ever seen. I decided to put the oats on the sand because sand would dry faster if the rains ever came. We had just done some major work on the sprinklers, and we had hope that they would be more reliable than they had been the previous year, which was nothing less than a drought.

So, how much seed do I plant per acre? Again, I asked around and found some great answers, most of which were within ... say 50 pounds per acre. Because the intended oat ground is irrigated and on last years corn stalks to boot, we decided to plant without putting down starter fertilizer. Tons of trash from the previous year remained, and we thought the wind would blow the trash off as soon as we planted, and some of the fertilizer would be on the blowing trash. I didn't want the swather cutting stalks so I used a stalk shredder before planting. We use liquid placed on top of the row with this drill which seems to work fine.

Well I pulled the drill to the field and put in the bags of seed I had. I was shooting for 70 pounds per acre. I made two rounds and the seed was gone. Seems I had the drill set wrong,... no, the chart didn't go that high! I reset the drill and finished the half circle. Two days later the wind came up and blew the trash off. It would have been hard to find a cleaner field. Alas, there were oats and, since the trash was gone, a few weeds decided they should venture out too. Since I wanted to put some oats up in small square bales for horses, I didn't spray any of the crop.
Well, the corn was planted and the summer looked great. The spring rains had done their job and everything was green. Then the rain stopped. We couldn't get a rain to save our o--s. The sprinklers we had just overhauled were working overtime to keep up as the poor oats were nearing the cutting stage. A huge hail storm ravaged our wheat, and we were allowed to cut some of the damaged crop for hay. I had just pulled the swather into a big grass field and made a few rounds when a small shower came along. The showers continued periodically throughout the 10 days I was swathing in the grass field. I finished and moved the machine some 12 miles to cut the wheat hay. I made a few rounds before dark and before a big shower came along. A week later I finished cutting and nearly had the balers caught up when I moved to the oat field.

 By now the oats were well past the prime stage for cutting but would still make good cow feed. I decided that this time I wasn't taking a chance of even getting rain on the windrows so I cut a small grassy corner. Just as I was finishing, a shower came along and wet up the rows. In complete disbelief, I waited a couple days to finish cutting the oats. I was baling on the last short rounds when rain drops again hit the windshield of the tractor. Yes another big shower! Now the year before proved one of the driest on record; but with all of these showers, I knew this was going to be a great year. After the oats were stacked the rains stopped. The rest of the summer was unusually dry!

Believe it or not!
By Rick Vorce author and co-owner of www.CountryHay.com  - covering local events, writing interesting agriculture related articles, and providing national horse and cattle feed listings.

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Now here is my disclaimer: I drove a tractor in a circle summer fallowing for a couple of decades, so as I told the folks in Denver when I moved here 10 years ago, if you think I can spell or remember the grammar I learned in high school, you'd be incorrect. I don't know everything and can make mistakes. Just like listening to the preacher on Sunday, you better follow along in the Bible to be sure. Sorry for any mistakes they were not intentional.

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