Making Hay from Festolium

[Pan mixer]

Weather permitting I may well be doing this, I have made thousands of acres of hay in the last 35 years but never from this.

It is more leggy than Italian and the stems don't seem as thick nor the nodes quite so juicy.

IME Italian makes hay in about 2 weeks due to those nodes, has anyone found that festolium is easier.

The yield is enormous, last year it out performed Italians during the dry second cut, this year (year 2) it has yielded well over 20 hard, dry 4 foot bales to the acre whereas the Italian did just 16 last week.

I might be growing some more....What does anyone else think?

 

[clemmo]

Which festolium ?

 

[Pan mixer]

Which festolium ?

Perun apparently - does it make a difference?

 

[neilo]

Perun apparently - does it make a difference?

Yes. Some are PRG x and some are IRG x. Perun is an IRG x iirc.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Perun apparently - does it make a difference?

Not a huge difference.

I think you have it fairly well sussed.

From what I've seen you'd basically want to have the tedder running in the same field as the mower, few down here ted anything but hay, but the leaves seem to go off very quickly - less juicy and a broader leaf?
The seed co. in town used to sell heaps of festulolium especially Perun, when it first came out.

 

[Pan mixer]

I try to ted within an hour or two of the mower, it is tricky when you are mower operative and tedder pilot too.

 

[neilo]

I try to ted within an hour or two of the mower, it is tricky when you are mower operative and tedder pilot too.

I read on here that you really should be tedding it within half an hour of mowing......

 

[Great In Grass]

Perun is a cross between Italian ryegrass and meadow fescue.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

I read on here that you really should be tedding it within half an hour of mowing......

It's amazing what you "read on here"!

It always seemed to me that a moco would be a great tool for Perun crops, I've only ever mowed a couple of paddocks of it but remember thinking how quickly the cut crop was fading in colour/wilting compared to the RG's.

But, we don't all live in an ideal world where the tedder operator is all greased up and waiting for one to knock the grass down

 

[Pan mixer]

Perun is a cross between Italian ryegrass and meadow fescue.

I may have bought it from you?

 

[Pan mixer]

It's amazing what you "read on here"!

It always seemed to me that a moco would be a great tool for Perun crops, I've only ever mowed a couple of paddocks of it but remember thinking how quickly the cut crop was fading in colour/wilting compared to the RG's.

But, we don't all live in an ideal world where the tedder operator is all greased up and waiting for one to knock the grass down

There is a bit of a logistic problem though - mow the headlands first then up and down, the tedder doesn't want to go until all the headlands have been run on...

I will admit that I used to ted the next day or even two days later but the stuff dries a lot quicker with quicker tedding.

When making haylage of the whole field I will usually just tedd the headlands that day and so they are well ahead of the rest of the field as, in the normal run of things they are tedded last when the field is finished and need to be baled first of course.