# Oats



## jdhayday (May 12, 2014)

Going to plant some oats this spring for hay. I have grown them before but just wanted some opinions.

1. How early can one plant them? (central nebraska)

2. What varieties has everyone used?

3. lbs per acre to plant

4. What kind of fertility program have you used?


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## stack em up (Mar 7, 2013)

1. Early as possible, can even do it when the ground is still quasi-frozen

2. I really like Horsepower. Yields like a fiend and stands well. Gem oats are good too. Am going to plant 20 acres of Shelby 429 this year too.

3. I always plant 3 bushel to the acre. So about 100 lbs/acre.

4. Oats likes N, but don't go overboard. It'll go down on ya and you will be picking it up with a shag carpet rake... Formula to use is yield goal (bpa)x.80= N

Use a fungicide at boot stage to prevent rust.

.


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## Redbaler (Jun 10, 2011)

Good choice oat hay is some of my favorite feed. The cows go crazy over it! Just a pain to get them dry sometimes. Pretty cheap seeding too. I even mix some pasture mix in with it to get a second cutting later on.


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## NebTrac (Aug 12, 2014)

Assuming your raising them for forage.

I raised them last summer. Planted 90#, Stallion oats from Arrow Seed. Soil tested and (going off memory) required about 70#'s N. Other nutrients I don't recall. All of this under pivot.

Plant date was last week in Feb.

Harvested about 22nd of June. Had to rotary rake them twice but baled on the 25th. Yield was about 2.75 tons per acre. Followed up with Teff and got 2 cuttings there.

I plan on doing it again, but will put peas in with the oats this year and I will go with Goliath oats this year.

Troy


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## prairie (Jun 20, 2008)

NebTrac said:


> ...I will go with Goliath oats this year.
> 
> Troy


Be* very *wary of Goliath oats. Last year I sold certified Goliath to 20+ customers for forage use over a wide area NE, IA, SD. Not a single one will plant it this year, and I even lost one customer forever over it. While other oats like Jerry and Shelby 427 stood just fine, Goliath lodged terribly in every situation. Lodging was the worst on higher fertility and irrigated situations, but noticeably worse than other varieties even on lower fertility dryland. The guy I hired to swath mine said it was the worst lodging he has seen in 50+ years of swathing oats. Yield was good but harvesting was a nightmare.

Most of my customers will be planting Jerry and Shelby 427 this year, both of which are well proven.


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## prairie (Jun 20, 2008)

stack em up said:


> 1. Early as possible, can even do it when the ground is still quasi-frozen
> 
> 2. I really like Horsepower. Yields like a fiend and stands well. Gem oats are good too. Am going to plant 20 acres of Shelby 429 this year too.
> 
> ...


Stack em up, pretty well nailed it, but be sure to check on forage harvest and feeding restrictions before applying a fungicide.

Horsepower is a good forage variety that we have sold, and Jerry and Shelby 427 are very popular and well proven varieties in NE and SD.


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