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Good Ol' East Texas | We have some dairies in our area that are wanting to go to no-till which some of them are our clients. We are in pretty sandy soils. All their land is used for chopping silage. Their rotation is triticale cut in the spring which is usually during the wet months, followed by corn harvested in mid-july followed by another crop of corn harvested in late october early november then seeded with triticale. All use manure from the lagoons mostly put out by pivots or drag lines. Has any dairies tried going to a no-till operation?
We usually just disk and run a cultivator to level the ground back after chopping before planting the triticale and before the first crop of corn. It is usually to dry to break the ground in the summer for the second crop of corn. They just want us to disk the ruts out with one pass which some of the ruts are deep. I think disking parts of the field and not the rest will have an affect on the crop. We do the mowing for them on the triticale with triple mowers so we would like it to be smooth.
I think compaction with all the traffic in the field will eventually decrease the yield especially with pushing their soils to the limit as they are now. I don't think ripping will do any good in deep sand but a disk or cultivator will help with the compaction. Does anybody think that no-till will work with them in this rotation? | |
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no-till in dairy operation?
