Oat hay and other spring cash crop thoughts. Do U feed oats

[fastline]

I have some ground that I hayed oats on last year. I mostly found that trucker rates stopped about all my sales and still have some bales in the field right now. Some of the fresh cut sold for good price but the rains came last year and my bales got rained on while pushing up all the summer grasses.

I am regrettably considering oat hay again this year just because it is an aggressive spring crop that locks out weeds. I have been looking for a replacement crop for spring but not much to consider. Ideas?

How many here feed oats? Does it just come down to price? It is really hard to compete with perennial products with no planting costs. Everyone is concerned if their livestock will eat it but I have yet to have even one problem. One lady said her cattle, horses, even hogs ate it. I believe the palatability is good.

For those that do feed oats, what is your going rate per ton or bale?


I seemed to have sold quite a bit to ranchers weaning their calves. I am looking at maybe adding field peas to the oats this year to get protein up. Is that something ranchers would be interested in?

 

[Big Swede]

I love putting oat hay in my feeder calf ration. We used to grind alfalfa to put in their ration but used to have problems with bloat so the switch to oat hay helped with that. I've never sold oat hay but it should be worth about the same as first cutting alfalfa/grass hay I would guess. Peas and oats are more expensive to plant but adds a lot of protein. Should be easy to sell.

I'm in the same boat as you, not sure what to plant. I have already ordered my seed corn but am not too sold on the idea this year. Might be tough to even break even this year. I have considered oats for either grain or hay then come back in with a cover crop to graze. We irrigate so we double crop every chance we get.

 

[Ho55]

I bale up some oat hay every year. And sell some as well. I like to feed it when it's cold. Cows seem to lay off it when spring comes around. I too like to mix it with some other hay as I'm feeding. I sold my oat hay for 130.00 a ton this year.

 

[burnt]

I grow a mixture of oats, barley and peas here. We cut it almost before it begins to fill or it gets too hard for calves. Almost like feeding straw.

The weather kept us from cutting it as early as we would have liked last summer and they got a bit too mature. Missed the optimum window by about 4 days. But we're feeding it to some bred heifers and 2nd calvers so it still works.

Hard to go wrong by adding peas. They really boost the protein and palatibility. I've seen the cattle sniff out the pea plants and pull them out of the bale to eat first!

 

[fastline]

what about 100% pea hay? why are they usually mixed with a cereal? I know the tonnage goes up but would sure seem the pea would be a solid product having high protein and likely higher palatability than Alfalfa?

 

[Ho55]

fastline
Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2014 1:30 pm Post subject:
what about 100% pea hay? why are they usually mixed with a cereal? I know the tonnage goes up but would sure seem the pea would be a solid product having high protein and likely higher palatability than Alfalfa?

It will be hard to get dry.[/quote]

 

[gcreekrch]

I love putting oat hay in my feeder calf ration. We used to grind alfalfa to put in their ration but used to have problems with bloat so the switch to oat hay helped with that. I've never sold oat hay but it should be worth about the same as first cutting alfalfa/grass hay I would guess. Peas and oats are more expensive to plant but adds a lot of protein. Should be easy to sell.

I'm in the same boat as you, not sure what to plant. I have already ordered my seed corn but am not too sold on the idea this year. Might be tough to even break even this year. I have considered oats for either grain or hay then come back in with a cover crop to graze. We irrigate so we double crop every chance we get.

Shoulda kept them $1300 steers and put them on irrigated grass. :wink: :lol:


Either that or some of those gold plated bred heifers they sold at Valentine this week....

 

[fastline]

We got nailed middle of last year with a LOT of rain. At a time when all my hay was baled and ready for sale. So, all mine got rain and I could not get to them to load for weeks and everyone else with warm season products were grinning from ear to ear.

I could mark it on the calendar, after that rain, the calls stopped. I am just now getting more interest as hay rations are depleting. A rancher just bought 36 bales as he was going to run out. Early spring, I had 5 emails a day wanting hay... Some of the fresh cut stuff left for over 200/T!!


I guess I will have to hope I can find buyers but another thing that hurt me was there is a guy very close to me that I guess grew oats and was selling large rounds for cheap. I was pretty much screwed until he ran out which meant mine just got to weather and look worse by the day.

 

[Triangle Bar]

Oat Hay is good feed, I feed and sell quite a bit every year. The only thing I check for that might be a problem is nitrate level. I like to feed it 2 to 1, oats to rained on alfalfa, and cows, bulls, calves, horses, etc. eat it right up.

I used to like to grow spring wheat but anymore the inputs are just way to expensive to do that. Oats are much more forgiving to weather and soil conditions, IMHO.

I can sympathize with you on the trucking deal. There have been times where the trucker made more per ton than I did. That's why I bought my own truck & trailer, which can have it's headaches as well... but for the most part I think its been a great marketing tool.

I sold this year's oat hay at $190/ton at the stack, however the prices have backed off some in the past month or so.

 

[Justin]

i have fed a lot of oat hay, great feed. but don't put up more than you can feed or get sold. if the weather don't get the best of it, the mice will.

 

[fastline]

Let me ask this, if I decide to add pea to my oats this year, would you guys typically prefer that over straight oat hay? I know lots of guys start calves on oats so not sure if pea would compliment that or detour buyers for that purpose?

I was chatting with some of the horse crowd and they mostly want grasses or squares. Just not enthused to cater to them only to sell very limited qty to them.

 

[Big Swede]

I love putting oat hay in my feeder calf ration. We used to grind alfalfa to put in their ration but used to have problems with bloat so the switch to oat hay helped with that. I've never sold oat hay but it should be worth about the same as first cutting alfalfa/grass hay I would guess. Peas and oats are more expensive to plant but adds a lot of protein. Should be easy to sell.

I'm in the same boat as you, not sure what to plant. I have already ordered my seed corn but am not too sold on the idea this year. Might be tough to even break even this year. I have considered oats for either grain or hay then come back in with a cover crop to graze. We irrigate so we double crop every chance we get.

Shoulda kept them $1300 steers and put them on irrigated grass. :wink: :lol:


Either that or some of those gold plated bred heifers they sold at Valentine this week....

About five years ago when corn was cheap I considered planting some of my pivots to grass. After doing some research I found out that it would take about as much fertilizer as a corn crop so decided just to plant corn again which turned out to be a really good decision the way the price of corn went the last few years, but now I find myself in that same situation. I'm not courageous enough to hang on to $1300 steers, I'll let someone else take that risk, but thanks for the tip gcreekrch.

 

[Faster horses]

i have fed a lot of oat hay, great feed. but don't put up more than you can feed or get sold. if the weather don't get the best of it, the mice will.

Justin is right. Another thing to consider, which I am sure you are aware of,
is to harvest the oat hay before it gets mature. Our cows always loved oat hay and preferred it to about anything else. We bought some oat/pea hay and it was terrible because it was cut too late. Like way too late. We ran a forage test on it and it was only 5% protein. Not much better than straw.
Disappointing.

 

[fastline]

Yeah, I realize boot stage oats is always preferred but I would bet the only guys doing it are using on their own farms. I found that you just cannot get enough tonnage and guys won't pay a DIME extra for it. We cut at full flower just when it starts to milk. Certainly not dough or grain stage. I hear horse folks whine about how mice eat their oats or the horses only eat the heads, etc.... What are they buying?

Our oats are a forage variety that have small, useless heads and I would never let them grain before cutting.

Now with adding peas, I might need to look at that side of things.

 

[littlejoe]

Yeah, I realize boot stage oats is always preferred but I would bet the only guys doing it are using on their own farms. I found that you just cannot get enough tonnage and guys won't pay a DIME extra for it. We cut at full flower just when it starts to milk. Certainly not dough or grain stage. I hear horse folks whine about how mice eat their oats or the horses only eat the heads, etc.... What are they buying?

Our oats are a forage variety that have small, useless heads and I would never let them grain before cutting.

Now with adding peas, I might need to look at that side of things.

My experience---peas like it early, they like it wet/cool, they need specific inoculant, they add pods till cut, can only use certain weed sprays, by time stems are dry the rest likes to shatter

I seeded a bag about a mo ago into stubble--my 'agronimist' wanted to try them, figgers if it works could yield quite well--a fairly new variety.

 

[Faster horses]

Yeah, I realize boot stage oats is always preferred but I would bet the only guys doing it are using on their own farms. I found that you just cannot get enough tonnage and guys won't pay a DIME extra for it. We cut at full flower just when it starts to milk. Certainly not dough or grain stage. I hear horse folks whine about how mice eat their oats or the horses only eat the heads, etc.... What are they buying?

Our oats are a forage variety that have small, useless heads and I would never let them grain before cutting.

Now with adding peas, I might need to look at that side of things.

I dunno. Buyers are getting wiser to quality. And for horses, that hay can contain NO DUST. So many people who raise hay but don't have horses, don't realize that. Horses are very susceptible to dust--damages their lungs.
The way Soapweed puts up his hay, cuts it with a mower, that's the best for horse hay--cures evenly and less chance of dust.

 

[fastline]

We cut ours with a sickle swather with conditioner but we took the chute off to spread the hay over a wider area. As I understand it with horses, the "dust" that most affects them is actually a powdery mildew that forms on moist hay?

 

[Silver]

We cut ours just at early dough stage and wrap in plastic. Excellent feed.

 

[katrina]

JFYI.. Oats are bring more than corn. But remember the differance in weight. Dittos to the dough stage. I wouldn't feed it to my horses, so guess I don't know about that. Gotta get it in early. We plant spring wheat with the same results if mother nature dictates so.

 

[Ho55]

I planted some 4 way mix this past summer. Beardless barely, oats, beardless wheat and peas. It makes some real nice feed. My cows are really liking it.