O/T Sorghum sudan grass

EOTL · Aug 6, 2016

Anyone here make balage out of Sorghum sudangrass ? have 20 acres planted the first 3 acres are ready. How long do you let it sit ? mine is 4' planted 50lbs to the acre. made plenty of grass balage, just never of any of this. Was thinking mow Sunday just wide enough for the baler and bale Tue. Thanks. Jay

r.w.b. · Aug 6, 2016

weather permitting be more like 3 days. those stalks have a lot of juice in them.udan is hard to cure out. I used a mower conditioner then as soon as field was cut I ran an old hay crusher and it really busted the stalks ,then it took a day more to bale

tomNE · Aug 6, 2016

sudex can be a real pain. cut when short. cut high. pray for hot dry days with wind
most guys here, green chop it

Charlie M · Aug 6, 2016

When I was growing up in the 60's on a small dairy farm we would grow that stuff and green chop it.Cows loved it and would milk like crazy. Hard to believe you can ever get that stuff dry enough to bail.

EOTL · Aug 6, 2016

Not looking to get it dry, looking to get it down to 60% so I can bale it wet and wrap it. didn't know if anyone here wrapped that stuff before. weather looks good here Sun-Tue Thanks again. Jay

r.w.b. · Aug 6, 2016

I had to go look.i used a E.H.Cunningham hay crusher.it was made in the early 50's. my neighbor used it behind his wd 45 with side mount sickle mower. a 9' windrow of 5'tall sudan pulls hard .pulled it with my 312 case n in 3rd gear second range it kept the governor open.but shreds the stalk and speeds drying up to where you can bale and keep te leaves. as for wrapping I don't know anything about that but id say sealed up it would work.i chopped lots and put it in a stave silo as well as green chopped .good feed as stated above cows milk great on it

David from Kansas · Aug 6, 2016

Lots of that done around here, but only dry baled. Have some right now ready to swath if we can get about a week or more of dry hot weather. We crimp the whell out of it so as to get it to dry faster. Sometimes we can get it up without rain on it and other times NOT. Will try to leave 4-6" of stubble to help hold the windrows (15 ft) off the ground to aid drying.

Texasmark1 · Aug 6, 2016

Did you use a swather (cutter-crimper) to put it down? If not you need to crimp the stems as soon after cutting as possible if you plan on baling it. If not the leaves will be dry and cracked before the stems dry out. I think the crop would make perfect silage working it just like corn, especially if you let it mature and the stems get the size of a silver dollar.....never will get those suckers to cure.

notjustair · Aug 6, 2016

That's how we fed cattle growing up. We made all of our bales from sudan and also chopped it and made sileage out of it. I don't recall it taking forever to dry down, but it was western Kansas hot and dry.

O/T Sorghum sudan grass

EOTL

New User

r.w.b.

Well-known Member

tomNE

Member

Charlie M

Well-known Member

EOTL

New User

r.w.b.

Well-known Member

David from Kansas

Well-known Member

Texasmark1

Well-known Member

notjustair

Well-known Member

Similar threads