Hay field aeration or deep rip? Pasture too

[1256pickett]

A number of years ago I was at a field day on a dairy farm and he was very excited about an aerway he had used on his pasture and hay fields. I have thought about it but not done anything about it. Last week or two I’ve started to look a little more into it. Seems to be mixed reviews out there on if it’s worth the cost. 
There was one study that looked at 4 different tools. The aerway style machines didn’t work very deep and prone to breakdowns. There was one deep ripper style that was much better on depth although not as deep as what I think of deep ripping,9” maybe, but cheapest to operate. The last was a ‘ranch worx’ that looks like a land roller with paddles. It fractured soil 18” deep! Downside was it was most expensive purchase. 
For my little operation cost is big factor so that one is out. I was thinking of finding and older deep ripper to fit my price range or maybe some tillage radishes. My brother does a lot of radishes in the corn and beans but doesn’t think they will take in the sod, germination issues. From what I’ve read the parabolic shanks would destroy the sod I need a no till shank but the older rippers are parabolic. 
I might not do anything or I might do something in a year or two but looking for any and all opinions and options. 

[dannyredfan]

I just bought one , it’s a Industrias America 10’.   I put 1200# of ballast.   Then added I drip bar and two tanks to put down compost extract.    It does pretty good sometimes it goes 2" sometimes 8"     you can really tell how complicated the soil is  

Edited June 2 by dannyredfan

[edwardporter1]

My buddy pulled a vibra shank with points over his alfalfa field right after he fertilized. He then flood irrigated. He triple his hay yield.

[mmi]

we have a heavier unit as shown, knives maybe a little narrow er.

for pastures it only goes 4" for hay the A point ,plucks more than poke. 

for 6"-12" (wet) there is a factory arena drag on board to spread the tufts and temper the holes.

best done with top seeding,earliest spring.

[Dirt_Floor_Poor]

“Here” it is an absolute waste of time and money. We have a Blu-Jet ripper and I can tell you that you have to get a lot of benefit from it to justify the wear parts and fuel that is consumed to do the job. I can’t speak to your ground, so it might be worth some experimenting. Deep ripping will dig up every single rock on the place, if there are any. 

[acem]

Pasture pokers were popular round here for a while.

Never seen them anymore.

[1256pickett]

4 hours ago, Dirt_Floor_Poor said:

“Here” it is an absolute waste of time and money. We have a Blu-Jet ripper and I can tell you that you have to get a lot of benefit from it to justify the wear parts and fuel that is consumed to do the job. I can’t speak to your ground, so it might be worth some experimenting. Deep ripping will dig up every single rock on the place, if there are any. 

That is a lot of what I have seen for research, it does good but not enough to pay for itself. 
As far as rocks go, yea we got em. They say the no till shanks are better than parabolic.
I would like to find something cheap to do experimenting with so I’m not out much if I decide it’s not worth it. 

[Dirt_Floor_Poor]

Just now, 1256pickett said:

That is a lot of what I have seen for research, it does good but not enough to pay for itself. 
As far as rocks go, yea we got em. They say the no till shanks are better than parabolic.
I would like to find something cheap to do experimenting with so I’m not out much if I decide it’s not worth it. 

I used to do some custom ripping years ago. You needed 300 hp to pull a 5 shank in line ripper “here”. I was charging $20/ac ten years ago, that wouldn’t be near enough now. That was about the last time I did any. I had a 410 hp tractor that could pull a 7 shank about 5.5 mph, but was a big load. V rippers pull much easier, but I could never see any benefit from them. I mostly got tired of everything that they would dig up, and oh the shear bolts I went through. I also tried using a shank type NH3 applicator on hay ground for a little bit to see if busting it up did any good. It didn’t. Like I said, that’s “here”.

[Ihfan4life]

18 hours ago, dannyredfan said:

I just bought one , it’s a Industrias America 10’.   I put 1200# of ballast.   Then added I drip bar and two tanks to put down compost extract.    It does pretty good sometimes it goes 2" sometimes 8"     you can really tell how complicated the soil is  

What’s compost extract?

[Ihfan4life]

18 hours ago, 1256pickett said:

A number of years ago I was at a field day on a dairy farm and he was very excited about an aerway he had used on his pasture and hay fields. I have thought about it but not done anything about it. Last week or two I’ve started to look a little more into it. Seems to be mixed reviews out there on if it’s worth the cost. 
There was one study that looked at 4 different tools. The aerway style machines didn’t work very deep and prone to breakdowns. There was one deep ripper style that was much better on depth although not as deep as what I think of deep ripping,9” maybe, but cheapest to operate. The last was a ‘ranch worx’ that looks like a land roller with paddles. It fractured soil 18” deep! Downside was it was most expensive purchase. 
For my little operation cost is big factor so that one is out. I was thinking of finding and older deep ripper to fit my price range or maybe some tillage radishes. My brother does a lot of radishes in the corn and beans but doesn’t think they will take in the sod, germination issues. From what I’ve read the parabolic shanks would destroy the sod I need a no till shank but the older rippers are parabolic. 
I might not do anything or I might do something in a year or two but looking for any and all opinions and options. 

Does your extension office have one you can rent? Will they cost share to try a few acres of tillage radish in sod? 

[dannyredfan]

3 minutes ago, Ihfan4life said:

What’s compost extract?

I use a compost I bought.     But I am making my own for next year. 
 Put your compost in a filter bag and run water over it.   Then use the juice (dirty water). And you can apply that, or spray it 

[Ihfan4life]

5 minutes ago, dannyredfan said:

I use a compost I bought.     But I am making my own for next year. 
 Put your compost in a filter bag and run water over it.   Then use the juice (dirty water). And you can apply that, or spray it  Leachate? Have you had any analysis done on this? Curious if it’s similar to liquid poop with minimal solids in it, or if it’s more like liquid poop after going through a manure digester and solids separator…

[dannyredfan]

Haven’t had any analysis done. 
this is a fungal dominant compost, it’s really a inoculate to add good bacteria and fungal microbes 

and I don’t brew it so it’s not a compost tea. 
I do add some fish fertilizer or molasses depending on the field 

time will tell lol. 

[1256pickett]

2 hours ago, Ihfan4life said:

Does your extension office have one you can rent? Will they cost share to try a few acres of tillage radish in sod? 

Our extension has gone downhill. They are really pushing the backyard farm thing. There was a no till drill there years ago but that thing was so wore out no one would use it. I’m not sure if they bought it used or inherited it from another county or was just a cheap drill but there was no maintenance to it at all. If that thing was useable I would try that for some radishes but that is not even worth asking about. 

[ray54]

To bad there is not more research on the bacteria, and microbes in the soil. I know the compost or compost tea  can do great things, but generally doesn't happen every time. 

[yellowrosefarm]

We hire a contractor at work that uses this verti quake attachment. It works great, but is expensive. It makes more sense for us to hire them once a year than to buy and maintain the unit ourselves.

 

[Jacka]

I don't know where you live but I have never seen pasture aeration up here and sub soiling is non existent.A local dealer had Aerator for rent or sale and I don't think it ever moved.I know the real cold winters with moisture in the ground do wonders for compaction and we always have our best crops after them.The ground just falls apart  following a real cold winter. This winter was warm and dry and it's telling. I guess if you lived where it's cold and dry or warm down south is where its needed. 

[DR.EVIL]

This is interesting.  My lawn service conned me into having my yard plug aerated one year. They brought there machine one day while I was at work and when I got home my yard looked like a huge pack of dogs all took a dump in my yard,  looked disgusting !

    I started gathering pieces of steel to build a semi-mounted lawn aerated, The frame is heavy enough to be a Glenco Soil-saver frame, my aerator has seven wheels with six 1/2" spikes each able to poke holes 3 to 4 inches deep seven rows wide about 6-1/2" apart. I pulled it with my home hade sleeve hit on my Cub Cadets, I normally used my gear drive 72 but did use the 982 once or twice. It pulled hard, about as hard as my 10" moldboard plow sunk in 6+ inches deep.  

        I used it here on my 2+ acre yard for 6-8 years and I really think it improved my yard. It tore a "V" shaped slot about 6 inches away from from a couple million other slots. My grass grew bigger and more green like I put a double dose of fertilizer on it. LAST thing before a solid frost I'd aerated.  NOW the self-appointed experts at a certain competing brand of garden tractor in typical fashion look down on anyone who doesn't plug or core aerated, and when I asked what they do with the ugly cores that look like dog turds one guy said they disappeared, no crap!  I haven't used the thing in 10-12 years, it's still got my 500+ pounds of steel on it. My sleeve hitch broke, a 1/4" by 2" steel bar broke. I haven't got around to making the new heavy-duty one. 

     Now, my tenant for my 80 acres years ago, in about 2006 or 2007 sent me his Climate Field View file, the corn yields, He'd planted tillage radishes on the whole 80.  Some places that 80 made just over 300 BPA and averaged around 250. When Dad and the neighbor farmed that 80 typical corn yield was 125 BPA. Granted the 300 BPA spots were without a doubt the small very best bits of ground on the place. Tenant was growing some pretty potent hog manure too and I know our 80 got a dose of that too.

      But my opinion is that, YES, aeration helps, but it's real easy to spend way more than it's worth trying to improve your yields.

[766 Man]

  The results of the sanctioned demo's by extensions or businesses are almost always to an extreme.  The sample farm is one where neglect has been going on for generations.  The average attendee to the field day can never replicate the results because his place was never let go like the field day farm. 

[IH Forever]

On 6/2/2023 at 10:17 PM, Dirt_Floor_Poor said:

I used to do some custom ripping years ago. You needed 300 hp to pull a 5 shank in line ripper “here”. I was charging $20/ac ten years ago, that wouldn’t be near enough now. That was about the last time I did any. I had a 410 hp tractor that could pull a 7 shank about 5.5 mph, but was a big load. V rippers pull much easier, but I could never see any benefit from them. I mostly got tired of everything that they would dig up, and oh the shear bolts I went through. I also tried using a shank type NH3 applicator on hay ground for a little bit to see if busting it up did any good. It didn’t. Like I said, that’s “here”.

Do you know why a V ripper pulls easier than an in-line ripper? I just haven’t figured out a reason why that would be true. In the 80’s not many did deep ripping but all you saw were V rippers.

[Dirt_Floor_Poor]

16 minutes ago, IH Forever said:

Do you know why a V ripper pulls easier than an in-line ripper? I just haven’t figured out a reason why that would be true. In the 80’s not many did deep ripping but all you saw were V rippers.

With an in-line ripper the dirt can’t be pushed to the side because of the other shanks. The dirt has to be lifted. If it is running at the proper depth it looks like an underground wave as the ripper goes through the field. The soil fractures as it is lifted. The first shank of the v ripper pushes the dirt around, then the other shanks push it back as they pass. The 7 shank in line would snuff out a 400 hp tractor in a badly compacted spot. The ground was incredibly mellow where we would rip, but it just did not translate into higher profits. 

[TN Hillbilly]

We used a field aerator a few years ago on a 6 ac field (old tobacco patch) that was badly compacted and yielded poorly. Now it's one of our best yielding hayfields. We rented this one, think it was an Aerway (it was yellow). We did it over the winter, when the ground was almost too wet to be on. It worked good, and gave the old 706 a pretty good workout. 

We really need to do some more of our fields, just can't seem to find the time.

[U-C]

a tine drag harrow also kinda aerates the pasture

[bitty]

On 6/2/2023 at 11:07 PM, 1256pickett said:

That is a lot of what I have seen for research, it does good but not enough to pay for itself. 
As far as rocks go, yea we got em. They say the no till shanks are better than parabolic.
I would like to find something cheap to do experimenting with so I’m not out much if I decide it’s not worth it. 

I'd look at roundup it twice spaced apart and reseed it no till with tillage radishes in the cover crop  

[1256pickett]

14 hours ago, 766 Man said:

  The results of the sanctioned demo's by extensions or businesses are almost always to an extreme.  The sample farm is one where neglect has been going on for generations.  The average attendee to the field day can never replicate the results because his place was never let go like the field day farm. 

My experience with extension is more on the side of they go for the guys trying something new. First year results look great but what happens year 2 or 3 or 5? I’m thinking of calling the guy that I originally posted about, it’s been about 5 years, but his father passed away this winter and his soon to be exwife is trying to take the farm. Last I heard he took an off farm job and sold cows due to the pending divorce.