Animal, alfalfa seed?

[randallnMo]

Animal, did you combine any alfalfa seed this year? You had spoke about it a year or so ago.

 

[Animal]

I sure did, it was the best crop I had this year.

 

[old]

Ah so you screw up and did something right this year even though it was almost impossible to to this year right??? Had to give you a hard time just to keep you on your toes LOL

 

[randallnMo]

Animal, what is your email address?

 

[Animal]

[email protected].

 

[Jamo58]

Animal, what machine did you use to combine, Do you just use a regular grain platform as the header? (I know you use some older equipment, curios as to what you might have used). Did you have alfalfa screens? Did you have to modify anything on your combine?

When did you combine? Was there any "straw" or feed value in the stems/leaves or was the alfalfa dried out by the time it was ready to combine?

Sorry for all the questions, just curious.

Thanks,
Jameson

 

[Animal]

I use an Allis Chalmers all crop 66 I use the same screen for alf alfa and clover seed. I have a pickup for the combine, although when it is good and dry in a wind row the grain head will work fine too. I seed third cutting alf alfa and second cutting of clover. I mow it in the afternoon and rake it into windrow early the next morning so I do not loose seed while the dew is on. Not only does it save me a little money, but it gives me self satisfaction raising my own seed. If you have any more questions I will be glad to try to answer them. One more thing I would like to add is that I made my own clover screen for my 3300 about five years ago when it was dry as a powder keg here and I combined both standing and windrowed clover seed that year....

 

[Animal]

You must be bored, don't you have any sugar cookies to bake or presents to wrap?

 

[Flewster]

(quoted from post at 18:16:57 12/13/11) I use an Allis Chalmers all crop 66 I use the same screen for alf alfa and clover seed. I have a pickup for the combine, although when it is good and dry in a wind row the grain head will work fine too....

I cut my alfalfa standing this year with my 66 and got about 100# from 2 acres. But I am very interested in how it picks up in the windrow without the pickup atachment as I dont have one.

I have a clover screen but not alfalfa screen per the book. Havent tried it yet as I didnt have when I combined the alfalfa and used a wheat screen and got lots of green in it that I had to spread out and dry.

 

[old]

Just joking with you seems every body in the area had a hard time getting much of any thing to grow well and be able to harvest it this year

 

[Animal]

Once you get your knife under the windrow it picks up real well. The only reason that I have a pickup is that it came with the combine, so I did not change it. Cousin has grandpas all crop that he bought new. They have done seed since it was new and never had a pickup head on it. He has those special crop lifters that go on the knife, but they are on a wire hanging off the reel, they have never been used. I use the same screen for clover and alf alfa, when you get that put in you will not believe how clean your seed will be. Do you know about Yaz all-crop?

 

[Animal]

Ya, I know. But what about those sugar cookies? Gotta have them for Santa, or have you been a bad boy?

 

[jackinok]

hey animal,do you have a book on your 66? I dont recall if they were shown in the 66 book,and its been a long time but years ago on our 60 we had some screens made of heavy canvas that hung from the top behind the cyl. would use them only when doing small stuff like you. seemed to help it clean better,if you think your losing seed to it not cleaning well. I havent combined anything but wheat and oats with my old 60 in so long ive pretty much forgotten most i knew about it. but we did a lot of custom work on small places around here with one years ago. Every thing from clover to corn,peas ,beans, some sunflowers. Had all the screens and parts to ours but theyve all pretty much disappeared now. dont even know where the pickup reel is anymore its been so long,but they sure were good machines. tried to buy some canvases over the weekend,that a neighbor had hanging in top his barn for years,but I havent heard back from the folks yet. All ways ran mine with a wd. but thinking of trying it on a "n". Probably not enough hp though. believe it or not I had a neighbor once who would mow his pastures with one. he had a spreader wheel on the outlet and he would combine out the weed seeds. was bound to miss some but he had less weeds in his pasture than anyone around!probably could bag those seeds and make a fortune these days as native grass seed.

 

[Charlie M]

How do you know when the clover seed is ready to be harvested? I've had some late season 2nd cutting clover that was too late to cut and bale that I have thought about getting some sead from but haven't ever tried. It would be a reason to get out my AC66 also.

 

[old]

Haven't you heard due to high fuel prices and the economy Santa is only going to be stopping at every other house in order to cut costs so if you did not get a notice in the mail he will be stopping by if you did get the notice then if you do not like it your are suppose to write congress and complain.

 

[Animal]

Charlie, what I do is wait until the blooms turn brown and I will pick a bloom and use a finger and rub it into the palm of my hand to see how much and what the seed looks like, if it looks light green and shells fairly easy its time to cut.

 

[Animal]

Man is that a thought! Jack did you know that their is a market for ragweed seed? They are using it for bird seed. I bought new drapers for my combine from Yaz allcrop, they are rubber and they sure work well. I have a book on my combine but I must have over looked about those canvas curtains. But I sure will check it out, I can see where that would work. As you have seen on the N forum I am going to try alot of things with my small tractors and combining is what I was thinking of. As a matter of fact I am kind of looking out the corner of my eye for another all crop to use for beans and wheat. I never imagined that an all crop could do sunflowers, if you don't mind and can remember tell me how you set up the combine to do flowers.

 

[jackinok]

as well as i could remember we simply waited until they were dry enough to start dropping seed,raised the cutter bar high enough to just cut below the heads, .as far as cyl speeds, spacing,blower etc i would have to try to find my old book.beans were fairly simple you just slowed the cyl way down ,and opened it up to keep from cracking seeds.the hardest thing about them as i recall was getting them uniformly dry.corn we would simply let it dry good cut it and pickit up like you are doing . we never did have the row attatchment to pick it. I will see if i can find my old book ,But i thought all the recomended setting for different crops were in the operators manual. Keep you eye out for adjustable screens,thats the way to go,instead of changing them for every crop if you really going to do a lot of different stuff.watch around for a old manual for a model 60,it showed the what We called blankets hanging inside. what they basically did was slow the wind down from the blower,even more to keep really small seed from blowing too much,if you had your blower too fast it would simply blow seed out of bin as I recall.and the blower even set on its slowest speeds was a little to fast.the reason they dont show them in later models could be that they could slow the cyl more maybe, i dont know.but it sure made a difference on ours.but again they were all very early sixties so their may be some difference.i will try to find my book,its should be with my other manuals if it still readable.

 

[Animal]

Thanks Jack!