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SW Ontario | Don't worry, it's ours, no neighbor bashing here!
We have three ~30ac hay fields; seed a new one down every year and rip one out, usually plowing and going to corn, but have been experimenting with no-till.
Last years new seeding looked poor going into winter so we left the old stand in case the new field winter killed; at least we would still have three hay fields to have enough feed. The new seeding looked good, so the plan for the old stand was to take first cut early (we usually start third week of May) and no-till the corn into the sod. It was the first time we've ever tried this, but have seen it mentioned several times on here. Due to a cool dry spring, first cut was late and the corn didn't go in until June 6th. We had a decent rain June 10th and another a week later or so. After that it turned hot and dry for six weeks. Also, neither of the spray passes got all the alfalfa, and with roots several feet down, it had the definite moisture advantage. So now we have a field of very poor corn with a decent stand of alfalfa between the rows and the question is what to do with it.
Silage is an option, not sure of the feed value, but it might be ok for the heifers if not the milking cows. Should we try to get the alfalfa with it? Will a rotary corn head (provided we could get our hands on one) cut alfalfa? We tried one pass with the discbine (seen in the pictures) with the roll tension backed off but it broke a lot of the cobs (what little there is) and left them on the ground. Is there a good way to windrow this stuff so we could use our pickup head?
In a different year, this might have worked, but we hopefully won't be trying this again!
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Worst corn in the township, what would you do?
