Can I use a mo/co (haybine) as a swather?

rambler · Dec 20, 2005

Doc, I'm in southern Minnesota. About 1/3 or less are straight combining oats & wheat these days, most are still windrowing it with a swather.

a swather is a different machine than a moco or haybine. I've had this dicussion with the Nebraska fellow on ytmag, so I understand. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif A swather gently cuts & draps the crop to the middle, laying it down in a nice fan shap, the previous stems keeping the heads up & centered.

A haybine or moco does none of that, it just flings the material back into the shroud where it gets soved into a windrow.

With the rolls jacked apart, then there is less fling to the material, & he won't get a good windrow. Even so he will loose a lot of kernals. With the rolls closed, he will loose most of the kernals.

either way, he will not get a good, well-formed windrow that dries the heads. it will be mashed up mess - good for drying the _whole_ stem, but that's not what we want - we want a dry seed head that is easy to pickup.

I think there is no chance of getting good results here.

I have baled oats haylage, and I'v e baled mature oats regrowth. I've used my 1209 to cut it. no way I'd get any useful grain.

I've swathed & combined with a dummy header all my life. Up here we get a lot of summer rain. The oats matures & dies, but it doesn't dry out well. In the very humid air. Then we get rains, and the weeds come. About the time the oats gets dry enough, the rain & summer storms knock it down, and the bad weeds grow through. And then you have a miserable mess that you can't do anything with.

As well, up here the straw baled into small squares is worth about as much as the oats itself per acre. So, you want it swathed short to the ground, if you pick up some weed mass so what, let it dry 3-4 days, combine it, rake it, & bale it. Only way to make money at all on those grain crops up here. Need to be quick about it, or you lose both crops.

So yea, there is alot of swathing & dummy headers up this way. We suffer very different weather conditions than you do.

--->Paul

Spiffy · Dec 20, 2005

I'm ignorant on haybines, and I have no idea how the particular one is question is layed out; so it may be interesting to hear how the experiment worked if he left the rollers wide and took it slow. I think an earlier link had information where someone had satifactory results, but most advised against it.

I have more questions than answers, but may spark someone elses imagination:

What are the goals:
optimal yeild?
nostaligia?
self sufficiency?
Barring the previous two, is there a neighbor with a swather or straight combine? For 10 acres, I'd think you could time the weather and ripeness well enough to get good results regardless of technique even if weather conditions would ussually favor one or the other.
Is his haybine also used for hay, or could it be used as a base for some creativity and a makeshift swather? Probably still cheaper to find a small swather, or a binder with the tie off beyond restoring interest (of course then the canvas is probably lost or shot too, not exactly cheap).

Questions, questions! /forums/images/graemlins/crazy.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
But love to hear to route attempted and results thereof! /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif

dbnair · Dec 20, 2005

Hi Guys,
thank you all for your insight.

I am a beginner horse farmer near peterborough, ontario.

I have about 75 acres of alfalfa, timothy hay which is square and round baled for the horses.

I also grow 10+ acres of oats for grain feed and I'd like to use the straw.

There are few farmers in the area with combines and those that have them are very busy and expensive. The guy next door combined them for me this year, but because he was busy we missed the perfect time and by the time we got the oats off they
were lousy and the straw was useless.

I just bought a new NH TN75a and wanted some independence to get a good harvest of these oats off so I bought a small good used pull type combine with a dummy head. I get to try it out next summer. I have the mo/co from all the haying operations.
There are alot of swather's around here for about $4000 but they are all old and its just another old engine I would have to keep maintained. I'd like a pull type swather but they aren't common here.

So my situation was I was trying to save $400 on harvesting a small amount of oats, and get better quality by doing it myself at the right time.

I'll do one strip with the mo/co when the time comes and let you know how it goes. And in the meantime I'll keep an eye out for a direct cut head for the IH82 and/or a good swather.

Thanks for your replies, you are an invaluable resource to people just starting out.

Grant

Robert_in_NY · Dec 20, 2005

Keep an eye on Fastline for pull type swathers. You might be surprised what comes up. Also, put the bug in your local salesmans ears as they deal with the farmers on a regular basis and might find you one who would sell one he is no longer using. Good luck to you.

dbnair · Apr 28, 2006

Hi Guys,

thank you all for you advice. I got lucky this winter and picked up a Massey Ferguson 36 self propelled swather with draper head and hay conditioner. It runs like a dream for an old machine.

I will let you know how my harvest goes this august.

Thanks

Jolene Goeso · Aug 3, 2013

dbnair said:
Hi,
I was wondering if you could help me.
I bought an IH82 pull-type combine for harvesting my 10 acres of oats. It has a pickup head on it.

I was wondering, can I use my JD 1219 mower/conditioner (haybine) to swath my oats for the combine? Will the haybine just rip the heads off the oats? or if I adjust the rollers out 2 inches, will it still leave too tangled a windrow to go in the combine? Any help/advice would be appreciated. Would prefer to avoid buying a swather and it'd be hard to find a direct cut head for that IH82 combine.
Thanks,
Grant

I was wondering the same thing. Did you get any reliable answers?

D7E · Aug 4, 2013

cowboydoc said:
I guess I'm a little confused Robert. Once oats mature out, and you can get 45 day oats, then they are basically dead. Once that happens the water to them is gone. It's basically a dead stalk. Hay on the other hand is always alive and growing. I guess I don't see the benefit to letting the oats dry on the ground? I would think you would get more moisture pickup on the ground and cutting the oats early rather than leaving them on the stalk.

We swath up to 800 acres of oats every year to combine and i find less grain loss than straight cutting as by the time standing oats are ready the elements have shaken a lot of grains off , Early swathing saves everything and gives a more even ripening unless you dessicate with roundup .