A Unique Silage Crop Mix | Triticale, Crimson Clover & Hairy Vetch

In this video, I am out in the field with a farm that is mowing their Triticale, or as they say out west, Triticale, and we're gonna watch them here. Now this field here had corn silage in it last year, or corn that they chopped for silage, and then they come in here and they seeded in this Triticale, and there's a little bit of hairy vetch and some crimson clover in here. Let's have a look. All right, you can see that there. See some of the crimson clover in there, and the vetch. The tractor and the mower's way down there, so we'll get a shot of that. Running in the field here is the farm's Case International 150 tractor, pulling this Vermeer TM1410 mower. Now this mower right here is just a disc mower that is cutting about 20 feet per pass. This has no conditioning rolls in it. The farm actually just picked this mower up. They also do have a New Holland disc mower conditioner with the conditioning rolls in it, but they're trying something different here, so on the Triticale, since this is pretty wet, they're gonna mow it here, and the idea is, or the theory is, that with no conditioning, it will not crimp it, and this will continue to try to grow after it's cut, which will dry it out faster so they can chop it. I never got back with these guys to ask how that worked out, but anyways, they are mowing this, and they are going to chop this for silage. And generally, depending on the weather, the heat, the sun, all that good stuff, they mow it one day and chop it the next. And I've done several silage videos with wheat, rye, or Triticale in the past. One of the questions I get is, why are they mowing it before it comes in the head? So generally, for dairy cows and stuff like that, this plant will have more nutritional value in it if they mow it right before it comes in the head. Now, I do have other videos where it did head out, and they are mowing it, and it just all depends what ration they're feeding their cattle, whether they're feeding it to dairy cows, dry cows, beef cattle, all that good stuff. I will have some videos coming up where they are actually mowing it and chopping it after the crop was in head, but there's a couple reasons for that. After the crop is headed out and doesn't have near the feed value, some guys will use that as a filler, for example, for dry cows that are not milking, so they don't get fat. I was just at a farm that mowed some. It got frozen, and it was not gonna make a good grain crop, although it already had a head on it, so there was no hope for the grain, so they were just mowing it and chopping it for feed just for that reason, to have something. And a lot of guys will actually plant corn into this field after they chopped off the crop and then chop that corn for silage in the fall. He is getting a little squirrely there with the tractor. I did not even notice this until I was editing the video, but wow. And that's going to wrap up this video. If you would, please go down there, hit that Like button. Feel free to leave a comment. If you're new to my channel, I would appreciate if you would hit that Subscribe button and check back often for new videos. I am always filming, editing, and uploading new content. You can also follow me along on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok at farmhandmike. As always, thank you for watching, and I will catch you on the next video.