Tiller turning horse and cow pastures

[Unhitched]

I would like some advice, I have 20ish acres of cow and horse pasture/dry lot in southern california, the soil is Decomposed Granite and sand. Compacted it can get VERY hard. Typically this time if year I try to pull all the horses and cows into smaller pens, so that when it rains I can plant some oats and maybe if the weather cooperates get a bit of oat hay. after it rains the first time I go over through the pastures with a tiller and my John Deere 4066, which works great for getting rid of the manure, the issue I run into is that where my hay rings are is always a mess. It tends to just clog up most of the tillage equipment I have tried on it over the years. gannons, spring tooth harrows, and my tiller just clog up and it is hard to spread it out evenly because it is just wet nasty grass hay.

That said I am thinking about buying a subsoiler this year and try and run that through the pastures first to drag the hay out of the packed down bunches and maybe put some of it deeper in the the soil, then rototill afterwards. then plant. is this a reasonable idea? any better suggestions for how to deal with under my hay rings?

Thanks in advance.

 

[mred2]

On my hay rings, I remove the rings and pickup any hay strings that I missed. I then use my rake and move the stuff into a pile. Where I pick it up or drag it to my compost pile. I have more than one. After a couple of summers, I than spread it onto the pasture. I do not have any luck in working into the ground until it composts.

 

[jeff9366]

It is unclear to me if you are interested improving all twenty acres, or just dealing with small area under animal feeding rings.

If you want to THOROUGHLY rework four to twenty acres of your land I suggest plowing with a moldboard plow, followed by a disc harrow to knock down the plow furrows. You will lose most of the existing grass when you plow, which may be a plus or a minus for you.

After plowing and discing get a soil test for each four acre section and amend soil according to test recommendations. Amend, drag to spread amendments evenly, seed and drag again.

 

[LouNY]

I would like some advice, I have 20ish acres of cow and horse pasture/dry lot in southern california, the soil is Decomposed Granite and sand. Compacted it can get VERY hard. Typically this time if year I try to pull all the horses and cows into smaller pens, so that when it rains I can plant some oats and maybe if the weather cooperates get a bit of oat hay. after it rains the first time I go over through the pastures with a tiller and my John Deere 4066, which works great for getting rid of the manure, the issue I run into is that where my hay rings are is always a mess. It tends to just clog up most of the tillage equipment I have tried on it over the years. gannons, spring tooth harrows, and my tiller just clog up and it is hard to spread it out evenly because it is just wet nasty grass hay.

That said I am thinking about buying a subsoiler this year and try and run that through the pastures first to drag the hay out of the packed down bunches and maybe put some of it deeper in the the soil, then rototill afterwards. then plant. is this a reasonable idea? any better suggestions for how to deal with under my hay rings?

Thanks in advance.

Yes just use your loader or blade and move it into a pile or piles keep it damp so it will compost.
We chisel plow and disk 3 feed lot fields in the spring after a winters feeding the deeper manure packs and hay has to be either spread real thin which is difficult to do or pushed up and worked around.
It would take considerable tractor to mouldboard plow a cattle arena after a years packing.
In our climate after a year it will be composted enough to spread out on the field and work in,
in your much drier climate it may take a couple.
I remember looking at the large dairy lots out in Southern California back in the early 70's when I was stationed at El Toro.
It amazed me what they could get by with as far as building or lack of and just small corrals with huge mountains of manure.
Then when it did rain what a mess, for a few weeks is all though.

 

[John0829]

Find yourself a disc plow, they are much better at turning soil IMHO than a mold board plow.

 

[Unhitched]

The problem I have with is it is so dry where I live it will never compost so I end up having to load it in my manure spreader and it is so bulky I have to do like 10 loads for each hay ring. I have like 20 hay rings.

I have tried a disc and found it basically useless on my soil, I think it was because it is so hard and the disc I was using was only a 6 foot tandem disc it i dont think it had have enough weight to make a difference.

I think I am going to try the Subsoiler, and if that does not work a mold board plow. With the mold board plow I am just concerned I will not have enough traction to pull it through my dry hard soil

 

[jeff9366]

Find yourself a disc plow, they are much better at turning soil IMHO than a mold board plow.

A 2-WD Deere 4310 with loaded rear tires or a 4-WD Deere 4310 with air inflated or loaded rear tires can pull a two (2) bottom 12" moldboard plow through almost any grass-free soil. A two bottom 12" moldboard plow can turn around 2/3 acre of ground during one hour.

I am not sure how that translates to disc plows but here are two disc plow venders with varying weight discs:

TDP2 Series 2 & 3 Blade Disc Plows | Tufline

Disc Plow | Turf Pride USA

 

[Unhitched]

Here I dont think that is the case, a D4 dozer has to make several passes with the rippers down to even get into soil. my 4310 could barely get my rippers from my gannon into the ground, they just skipped along the surface.

 

[LouNY]

If you piled the hay/manure and wet it down and covered it with plastic I wonder if it would compost down for you.

 

[Mat4644]

A stalk shredder or chopper will do the job. Some flail mowers offer straight blades made to shred material and disturb the surface. A rotary cutter very low and slow going will also chop and shrewd.