Bush hogging cornstalks

[ericjeeper]

I recently rebuilt my 310 Long tractor engine.
I think rated at 28 PTO horse. I hooked up the six foot BH to it yesterday and mowed about 7 acres of stalks to be baled for hay. I wanted to put a good hard load on it to help seat the rings.
I did seem to notice an increase in power after about 3 hours.Boy was it dusty.. My eyes are sore this morning. Now to get it raked and round baled before the rain comes.

 

[N80]

Baling corn stalks? I've heard of this, but is it due to lack of 'real' hay or is it a regular thing.

 

[wbb]

Baled cornstalks work great as bedding for growing / fininshing hogs in a hoop building or, as we do, in portable buildings on pasture.

We use an all-in / all-out system so as soon as the hogs are sold from each lot, the used bedding gets spread back on the crop ground. In the future we will be composting the bedding first before spreading it.

If you set the bales up on end and cut the strings the hogs will spread it for you. ( and have what looks like a lot of fun doing it ).

Wheat straw is getting harder to find and more expensive. We don't raise much wheat ourselves anymore. All the wheat straw we produce is used as bedding for farrowing and small pigs. Again in portable buildings on pasture.

 

[N80]

Aren't corn stalks hard on a baler or do you use a special kind.

 

[ericjeeper]

Yes baling for feed. Hay is short in Indiana this year. So we are baling some stalks to subsidize the hay.
Big round bales.. Not not really hard on the baler. I would not want to square bale em..

 

[Bird]

I never baled any cornstalks myself, but had a neighbor who told me he didn't like to do it because it was too hard on the baler. I didn't ask for details. But I also thought if you were going to bale the cornstalks, you'd cut them with something other than a brush hog or rotary cutter to avoid chopping them up so finely. Is that not so?

Just in my vegetable garden, I mowed down all the stalks and vines with the brush hog at the end of the season, with the cornstalks and okra stalks being the biggest and toughest, but then I tilled them in after letting the brush hog chop them up.

 

[ericjeeper]

I never baled any cornstalks myself, but had a neighbor who told me he didn't like to do it because it was too hard on the baler. I didn't ask for details. But I also thought if you were going to bale the cornstalks, you'd cut them with something other than a brush hog or rotary cutter to avoid chopping them up so finely. Is that not so?

Just in my vegetable garden, I mowed down all the stalks and vines with the brush hog at the end of the season, with the cornstalks and okra stalks being the biggest and toughest, but then I tilled them in after letting the brush hog chop them up.

seeing how the combine mashes two out of six rows flat. you just about have to bush hog to get those two rows cut loose too.
By cutting them up will make them easier to eat.

 

[wbb]

Now if you want to do it right ...
Crop Shredder / Windrower
Loftness Crop Shredders, Fully-Mounted

I sure would like to have one of these - but ...
http://www.loftness.com/pdf/CropShredder_Prices.pdf

 

[oliver28472]

Corn stalks are being baled for feed here also. They won't shed water like fescue round bales so they have to be stored in a shed pretty quick. We are very dry this year.

Like that Ollie. Is it a 1650? My brother has a 1650, and a 1655. He is keeping a nice 1555 for our cousin, who also has a 1600.

 

[Bird]

If they're going to feed cornstalks, it's too bad they couldn't have done as is being done in the attached picture. A consortium of a half dozen dairies contracted to buy local corn crops while everything was still green. They had special combines that cut, choped, and/or crushed everything! They cut the stalks and processed the entire stalk, corn, cobs, etc. They told me there would not be a single kernal of corn that wasn't crushed. In the field, the dump trucks drove alongside the combines, then brought their loads across temporary scales to this "silo". For those who have never seen such, that's a concrete slab 301' long by 251' wide, open on both ends but with walls on both sides, and yes, that's those 8 wheeled articulated John Deeres spreading and packing 65,000 tons of silage 45' deep. When finished, they covered the whole thing with black plastic. Of course it's used for dairy cattle feed, but the guy who was manning the scales told me his hogs love it, too.

Incidentally, this was July 7, 2002, on S.H. 171 just a few miles southeast of Hillsboro, TX.