# Soybean hay



## Sd1030 (Feb 4, 2015)

Im considering planting 6-7 acres in soybeans to harvest for hay for my cows. Is this a good idea?Also i had a local farmer tell me to add some millet in with the beans, is this a good idea too? Is it hard to get the beans to dry once cut? Ill be cutting with a disc mower.


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## Tx Jim (Jun 30, 2014)

I think both soybeans & millet will be very slow to dry when cut without the aid of a conditioner.


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## Sd1030 (Feb 4, 2015)

Yea i was kinda thinking that may be a issue, but wasnt for sure about it.


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## qcfarms (Dec 14, 2014)

I just bought enough Tyrone forage beans to plant approx 6 A specifically for hay. First time for me on forage beans. I've always heard they could be hard to dry but I thought I would give it a try. I do have a conditioner but the concern would be conditioning enough to do some good while keeping the leaves on. I needed a hay summer crop that could be fed to horses. Was thinking about trying Teff but just couldn't figure out a good way to plant it. I have a jd 8300 grain drill but the teff seed is to small for it I think and I would need a way to pack the seed if I broadcasted it in but have no cultipacker.


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## Waterway64 (Dec 2, 2011)

I planted coated teff seed through the alfalfa seeder on my drill. Mel


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## Lewis Ranch (Jul 15, 2013)

qcfarms said:


> I just bought enough Tyrone forage beans to plant approx 6 A specifically for hay. First time for me on forage beans. I've always heard they could be hard to dry but I thought I would give it a try. I do have a conditioner but the concern would be conditioning enough to do some good while keeping the leaves on. I needed a hay summer crop that could be fed to horses. Was thinking about trying Teff but just couldn't figure out a good way to plant it. I have a jd 8300 grain drill but the teff seed is to small for it I think and I would need a way to pack the seed if I broadcasted it in but have no cultipacker.


Your county probably has a brilion seeder they rent out.


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

qcfarms said:


> I just bought enough Tyrone forage beans to plant approx 6 A specifically for hay. First time for me on forage beans. I've always heard they could be hard to dry but I thought I would give it a try. I do have a conditioner but the concern would be conditioning enough to do some good while keeping the leaves on. I needed a hay summer crop that could be fed to horses. Was thinking about trying Teff but just couldn't figure out a good way to plant it. I have a jd 8300 grain drill but the teff seed is to small for it I think and I would need a way to pack the seed if I broadcasted it in but have no cultipacker.


I've heard of mixing the seed with cracked corn as a carrier... say you need 2 pounds of teff seed to the acre (just pulling that out of the air)-- most drills can only be set down to about 10 pounds per acre, so mix 2 lbs seed with 8 pounds cracked corn and set the drill to plant 10 lbs/acre of the mix... Best to mix the seed and carrier with an electric concrete mixer or something. I've heard of guys planting fuzzy seed (perennial bluestem grasses and such) this way. Might be an option for you, since your drill obviously doesn't have a small-seed (alfalfa) box on it... (don't know why those things are SO hard to find aftermarket... been thinking about building a warm-season (fuzzy) seed box with picker wheels specifically for planting warm-season grasses with my old 8300 drill). I'd love to add a small-seed box to my drill, but they're STUPID expensive, if you can even find them...

I've grown regular soybeans and took them as hay years ago. Back in 96, we had a SEVERE drought that completely wiped out our cotton crop-- didn't rain but maybe half an inch between February and late June-- and then only a tenth or two at a time, so essentially worthless... Anyway, we plowed the cotton up when the insurance finally paid off, but the soil already had Trifluralin broadcast and disked in, and Cotoran or Caparol banded behind the planter, and this was only a couple months after planting, and with no rain to break down the chemical, I figured that planting sorghum/sudan or any other grass-type plant was probably asking to have a stand failure and wasted seed, and we NEEDED the hay! SO, since yellow herbicides (Treflan,Sonolan, etc) is compatible with soybeans, and the Cotoran/Caparol was banded rather than broadcast, and the land had been totally plowed down (mixing the band with the surrounding dirt to dilute it) I figured it was possible to plant beans. We're usually growing everything on beds here, but I disked the fields flat and then flat-planted soybeans in our usual 40 inch rows... I figured if they looked like they'd make a crop (we started getting SOME rain around then) I'd combine the beans and sell them and buy hay... if the beans looked like they WOULDN'T make a good grain crop, I'd cut them and bale them directly for hay.

All I had was my PZ Zweegers drum mower to cut with, 7.5 foot at a time (two rows), so it'd be slow going. The beans were coming along; had some johnsongrass come up in them some crabgrass here and there, and some spots of morningglory and pigweed/amaranth, but they were looking pretty good. Then they started looking like they'd been hit with buckshot-- got to scouting and found armyworms. Didn't take a genius to know they'd eat them into the ground, and spraying them would be expensive, so I put the hay mower on and went to work, laid them all down for hay. No conditioner, but hot dry weather helped.

Well, usually in summer for grass hay, I can cut one day, rake the next, bale the third. This stuff I had to let lay for about 4-5 days. Raked at 50% moisture (wilted flat) to keep the leaves on it, and had some good pods with beans in there as well. Flipped the windrows once early morning with the dew on to dry the undersides of the windrows without shelling the leaves off. It took me about a week or so to get it all cut, raked, and baled in 5x5.5 rounds... made good hay, but still a bit damper than I'd like, especially where there was morningglory vines in it. Sleeved the hay with plastic bale sleeves from TSC (they still sold boxes of them back then) and stacked them end to end to store (outside) for winter.

Finally started raining more in August and the grass came on like gangbusters-- baled our pasture and some of my half-n-half customers on shares, so I had a lot of grass hay too. Fed about half soybeans, half grass. Easy winter that year, and didn't feed up everything, so I carried a lot of soybean bales over. Next year was normal, lots of hay to bale, so I had plenty of bahia on shares from my half-n-half guys. I fed mostly bahia that winter, but decided I'd better feed up some of the soybean stuff to get rid of it, but still ended up with some left over. The last I fed looked pretty ratty but I figured "what the heck, I'll roll it out and if they want it they can eat it; if not, it can rot where it lays and I'll disk it under..." Imagine my surprise when I unrolled a bale of BRAND NEW BAHIA grass, and then unrolled a bale of two year old ratty soybean hay that was pretty dusty, and had the cows RUN from the bahia to eat the soybean hay!! They did this consistently until I fed up the last of the soybean hay... they MUCH preferred even the old, dusty soybean hay to the FRESH bahia bales made a few months prior right at heading... I was rather shocked!

I wouldn't be afraid of soybean hay-- thought about it since then, but haven't had the need. A conditioner would probably DEFINITELY help, especially in a cooler, wetter environment. Without one you'd probably have to be a lot more careful, but can still probably do it with a little care- rake when the leaves are damp to minimize leaf-drop, and rake as soon as it's wilted flat... don't rake it DRY or you WILL lose the leaves. Most of the feed value is in the leaves, but the pods/beans and stems aren't worthless to be sure! Grass added in a mixed stand can help, but millet is hard to dry from what I understand-- something finer-stemmed would probably be preferable, like crabgrass or something (another seeded annual grass) I would think-- it'll be easier to dry and help "even out" any damp spots in the beans...

If you have access to a pull-type conditioner, I wouldn't be afraid of cutting it and then conditioning it immediately after cutting... I ended up buying an old 402 New Holland conditioner years ago for just this purpose (years later after I did my bean hay). That would work as well as a mo-co IMHO. Course, if you know someone with a mo-co, probably better to just hire them to cut it and condition it for you.

Best of luck! OL JR 

PS... I just picked up an old Dunham Lehr 16 foot cultipacker for just this reason-- rolling in small-seeded grass behind the drill... I got mine from Batta Farm Equipment in southeastern Indiana near Muncie... Paid $600 for it. He had quite a few various size/width/make cultipackers up there... found it on tractorhouse. Might be well worth it to pick up a good used one closer to you, or make a road trip if they're hard to find in your area, as they are in mine...

Might check with your conservation/FSA office to see if they have one to rent, but not all do... ours certainly don't! Good luck!


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## Grateful11 (Apr 5, 2009)

Soybeans and Brown Top Millet can make some great hay but here in NC I wouldn't try it without a conditioner. This was cut with a DiscBine. It had some leave shatter but not too bad, the stems on some of this where huge and we made sure it was crimped and cracked the entire length of the stem. Wife and son buy non-RU beans from a local farmer that cleans and bags their own beans.

There was no mold or caramelizing of any of the bean/millet hay this past season.










Different bale out in the sun. You can see the size of some of the stems on this one. It was fertilized with chicken litter.


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## Sd1030 (Feb 4, 2015)

Grateful im in NC too...what part are you in?


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## Bishop (Apr 6, 2015)

I've tried soybeans as hay and just couldn't get it dry (in Ontario, Canada). It is just too humid up here, and our normal methods of raking and tedding just rip all the leaves off. I have had great success with it as a pasture crop seeded with oats in the mix. Sheep and goats love it, but it is really a one time eat - not much regrowth to speak of.


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