|
| Hopefully new ways of harvesting grass will come around so we dont have to swathe anymore. But till then, I guess the excuses are many. One is wind shatter. I believe that's part of the reason they call the machines "windrower" in some areas. If the grass remains standing when ripe and a wind comes through, it can, but not allways will, shatter quite a bit.
Sometimes the grass will go down flat. Since, in grass, most turf types are planted on wide spacings like 18", and because most turf type grasses are perennial, the "crown" of the crop gets quite large over the years and can greatly hinder the ability to pickup the crop from between the crowns.
The usual "dry down" like in a lot of the other ares and other crops. Small seed crops like grass and clovers, will carry through the combine in the tougher green straw. And, as you probably allready know, its quite difficult sometimes to get the sycle and guards on the combine to cut tough green straw.:-(
Also, sometimes dealing with overburden in perennial crops becaomes easier when the crop is swathed. I think it would be near impossible to run a baler through grass straw if it were'nt cut off at the ground level.
Here's a pic of 2006 swathing tall fescue on our farm near hillsboro oregon. I'm in the second swather. This is our first year running a draper header. I have several pics of the 05 harvest with the auger headers too if you wish to see any.
 (06 fescue.jpg)
Attachments
----------------
 06 fescue.jpg (69KB - 563 downloads)
| |
|
Swathing before harvesting??
