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IL | My son was wondering why you guys out west swath some of the wheat, oats, and some other crops, then come thru with a pickup head, instead of direct cutting . "Don't they lose some of the grain" |
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La Glace Alberta Canada | Well us up north do it sometimes to take the green out of the grain. If we have a good week window swath and 4/5 days later u are combing. Hope this answers some questions |
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| Not much swathing "here" any more. The only small grain I have is oates, and that does get swathed. For me, it would lodge way too much if I let it stand to get ripe enough. Now back in the day when I raised wheat, it was a different reason. We usually had some weeds in the fields and the weeds would be green when the grain was close to ripe. So, you cut it down and let it lay to get everything dry. Almost never see wheat swathed any more. Fields are that clean now. Besides oates, I know a few guys swath canola, presumably because of all the shattering it would do if allowed to dry. Never planted canola, so I'm guessing. |
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IL | Kinda like when we fight green stem soybeans? |
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IL | So, the pickup belts are gentler on gathering the crop, than the sickle/reel.
Also, then the crop is fully ripe when swathed? Just a bit green ( kinda like right after corn blacklayers? |
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NE ND | Wheat can be swathed somewhere around 25% moisture without hurting yields. If weather is good and dry when the wheat is swathed, it will dry faster in the windrow than left standing. Your comparison to green stem soybeans is right on the money. Wheat was often swathed to cure green straw and late flushes of weeds. Also some varieties of spring wheat are prone to shatter. Pre harvest round up applications and new,better standing wheat varieties have almost eliminated swathing here. The increase of late season precip also reduced the number of acres swathed. Once in a windrow and multiple rains occur over a week or so, sprouting soon begins. |
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| Back in the day it feilds were weedier and grain sometimes had green heads. Swathed it right before it was fully ripe and let it all even out in the windrow weeds and grain. With clean feilds, Higher horse power combines and better genitics Straight cutting is much easier. |
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NE ND | Maybe a little less loss with straight cutting. The swather is equal in crop damage/loss to combine straight head. The difference is that with the swather any loose grain gets thrown into the windrow and often falls through to the ground. With the staight head those loose kernals fall directly into the header. |
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| One year we swathed the oats and it rained, almost dry rained again, oats almost dry so we borrowed a new fangled thing a dairy farmer just got, New Holland windrow inverter. Went out in the morning and carefully tunred it over till the oats started to fall on the ground, got almost half the feild turned, combined it that afternoon, other half was still to tuff underneath. |
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IL | I will have MC read your posts. For a 12 yr old , he is always wondering why somewhere else does it different |
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NE ND | I dont mean to hijack post but this was always an arguement especially in different parts of the state. Do you pronounce it "swatter" or "swather"? It was always called a swatter in this part of state. I always thaought it refered to "swatting" (batting) the wheat into a windrow. Lol.
Edited by monse 1/12/2012 23:05
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NE ND | As a 36 year old I still do that! |
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| combining at night with the crop in the swath you can go a lot longer than when its standing , straw gets tough quicker, |
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| Swatter, but spelled Swather. Not sure why. |
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IL | that's why I asked, I don't know a whole lot about things away from home |
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Heil Harvesting, Ulysses KS/Limon CO | In malt barley it is done to speed ripening to maintain grain quality for malting. |
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NC ND | one of the other reasons to swath is you can put just about anybody in a combine with a pickup head, start earlier and run later in normal weather. With the wrong crew I've seen a 30% increase in capacity with pickup heads. The biggest factors that have outdated swathers I think are the big air bins, pre-harvest roundup and big horse combines. Not doing any of the above, we went back to swathing. Have heard of a couple guys trying out the swathers again as they can leave a 35' double swath and they said it worked really well to pickup 70'. |
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| Crop is cut and laid in a "swath" so you are swathing. "Swatting" rolls off the tongue easier and probably would be considered slang.
Swathing is done in cereals to even out ripening due to uneven ground etc. Many parts of western Canada can have dead ripe crop on hilltops and still 30% or green in low areas. Instead of waiting another 2 weeks for it all to ripen and letting the ripe parts shell out, swathing was developed. We also have a limited amount of frost free days and swathing will prevent frost damage many years. Before good weed control, crop was swathed to dry down weeds also.
Canola is swathed because if left to straight cut older varieties would shatter and thin crops will also shatter. Straight cutting canola is gaining popularity but is a bit riskier than swathing and can be a hard crop to put through combine when standing.
Glyphosate, dessication aeration and drying have increased straight cutting, but swathing will always be popular. Some feel it is quicker picking a swath than straight cutting (I don't agree). Talked to a friend this week that swaths every acre, hilly, potholey ground and doesn't care for operator stress of straight cutting. Feels it is easier to find operators that are able to pickup than straight operators.
It is a management issue now, depends on preference. |
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| It's not grain, but we swathe the majority of our small seeds for the same reason mentioned above. To disconnect the crop stem from it's water source for dry down. Just like soybeans, once the crop is physically mature, cutting it aff at the base will dry things down much quicker without any loss to the seed. Helping reduce wind shatter is also a side benefit. This is a picture of the boss and I swathing a field of tall fescue that the bosses BIL took when he was here in 2006. He is an amature photographer. He really does some cool things with his cameras.  You can see how green the stems still are, but the seed tests about 28-32%. Here's a video that I made of combining red clover seed last fall. I wish I would have had some footage of cutting it, but maybe next year. The rows here were so huge they barely fit under the swather. Green as could be as we had an abnormal amount of rain last year. The braodleaf clover plant dries down to a very low volume row when windrowed. Some do cut it standing after desication with a chemical, but like the grass seed, if the crop falls over and the heads are close to the soil surface, it can be a challenge to get them all. 2011 clover harvest. |
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western iowa,by Denison | in the old days we swath oats basicly because your crop was made-once down and in the swath it was free from hail and wind-in wheat in Iowq we could swath wheat on Monday and combine full speed ahead on Tuesday! |
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western iowa,by Denison | maybe |
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Galahad, Alberta | around here it is "swather", but the farmers of German decent butcher the queens english and pronounce it "swatter".
Rosco |
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Rolla, ND | Traditionally, the swathing is done where the crop unevenly matures.
Down south, you'd see things grow until one day it gets so hot that basically everything is ready, plus, if you are using custom cutters, no use being ready several days befor they show up.
Across much of the northern plains what people would see for years is the hills would run out of steam (water) and basically mature and the thicker crop in the lower parts of the field would often just keep right on growing. By the time you could combine the low areas the hills often where broken down and you lost a lot.
Malting barley in particular was a problem because the varieties are basically bred to shatter, only hopefully not too bad. Sometimes it was too bad.
Normally the swaths didn't have a lot of problems with sprouting, though it could happen.
Now, in the grains we see people using Roundup to even things up and the rains are so much more common and larger that often the risk is greater in the swath than standing. So here we see increasing amounts of straighting wheat where it's now would be normal to straight or barley where the father in the operation is often pushing for swathing and the young guy says everytime we swath we have trouble so why swath. If you've never grown spring wheat, it has a lot of preharvest dormancy bred in so it won't sprout easily like winter wheat in the swath. Pretty much no one swaths winter wheat anymore unless there is a real problem they are trying to fix because two half inch rains and you have sprouted wheat. Spring wheat generally wouldn't even notice that.
Canola is still normally swathed. It's over a fear of shatering. If your field is ripe and waving in a 50 mph breeze, you can lose a lot. Plus the canola generally can just sit in the swath for a long time without many problems. You can get swath blowing but that is mostly a concern just the first days.
So times change, weather changes and what's the most risky changes and people change with it. |
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S.E. Iowa | Can a person discmow a crop and pick it up with a pickup head if they do not have a swather? We are going to plant oats and maybe field peas this year and thinking of doing this |
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NE ND | Not sure how a disk mower works but my guess is that it would be to aggressive and would break up heads and shatter to much. |
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Amity, Oregon | Swathers with disc headers are used for grass seed so it should work if you can form the windrow correctly. |
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NE SD | We used to swath wheat when it was pretty darn green. It would have us harvesting 7-10 days before the guys who straight cut. Back in the days before cheap glyphosate and high clearance sprayers many times it was done to avoid Pigeon Grass problems. That can make wheat a real bear to cut. Not only the weeds, but you could avoid some lodging, etc. Now when we grow wheat we use the 120' swather/sprayer and in 7-10 days you cut it.
One problem with killing crops with Glyphosate is it can affect germination of the seeds. Therefore, it is not allowed for malt barley, and highly advised against for seed production. |
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Swathing wheat and other crops. Why?
