Dukslayr
5 year old buck +
Hello -
I’m new to this particular forum but was a long time follower and contributor back on the QDMA forums. In the last 5 years I’ve moved on to a couple new properties since the QDMA forum days and I now own a more diverse piece of northern MO property with some larger food plotting opportunities/needs. Here’s the background:
The property I recently bought is 200 total acres; of which 125 acres of that is enrolled in CRP. The slopes in the CRP are decent and the land was mostly tiled and terraced from years ago but has been in the CRP program for nearly 2 full enrollments. The land has a lot of good options for food plots and based on my contract I should be okay to put in around 10 or so acres of food plots. The list of equipment I own for food plotting includes:
1. Kubota L3830 (38 hp/30 hp PTO) with a front end loader
2. Pull behind 50 gallon boom sprayer
3. ATV/UTV mounted 25 gallon boom sprayer
4. 2 different 3 pt discs (a 5' and 6' I believe)
5. 3 pt mounted spreader & also chest/strap mounted seeders
6. S-tine cultivator (6 shanks)
7. 12' cultipacker
8. 6' brush cutter
A couple of the above in inherited with the farm I just purchased. I also inherited a 12 (I think) chisel plow that I don't believe my tractor can handle. For the last 5 years I've been only maintaining about 1.5 acres worth of food plots and so my needs were very easily met with small implements and hand spreaders. I primarily have been planting and maintaining clover and wheat/rye, which obviously don't require a ton of work/maintenance. I'd like to expand my abilities to include corn, soybean, sunflowers, etc and I don't feel like the equipment I've got is going to lend its self well to "row" type crops. Here are my options as I see it. Just curious what you all would do in this situation and good options or thoughts that I'm missing here.
1. Keep my current equipment and rely on contracting with a local farmer for row crop planting. The pros I see here are: 1. Minimal capital investment for me. 2. Minimal time requirement to actually do the work. 3. Potentially better crop outcomes since this person would obviously know what they're doing from a planting perspective. The biggest negative I see are finding someone to do this for me (which may or may not be a challenge since there are several very large local farmers near me) and the yearly cost to do the planting on an annual basis.
2. Keep my current tractor and purchase some additional food plotting equipment that my tractor is capable of handling. I don't think my tractor is capable of handling a true "no till" style drill from the limited amount of research I've done on the. I see some the lighter models are probably light enough for come with some issues relative to ground contact and seed depth. I would probably add a 6' tiller and some sort of grain drill to use after prepping the seed bed(s) with the cultivator/disc/tiller. Obviously this would come with a bigger time and effort from a mowing, spraying, tilling then planting perspective. And I've never used a drill or planter before so there'd be some sort of learning curve here. The investment in a planter/drill and tiller wouldn't be huge though.
3. Upgrade my tractor to something in the 90 hp range and find an actual no-till drill to go along with it. Obviously this would come with, by far and away, the biggest initial up front investment (although with some tax advantages as well). I don't know how to use a no-till drill but I'm assuming I could get a pretty good tutorial from wherever I bought the drill from, particularly if it's the same place that the tractor came form. My goal here would be to purchase a late model tractor (mid 2000s) and used drill in the 6-8' range. My assumption is that if I buy the right drill and tractor I could sell my smaller tractor and not really need ton of additional equipment to get where I want to be. As I understand it, I could mow, spray and then drill most seeds (not sure about corn). Not sure how easy it would be to make soil amendments if needed without till in them in (i.e. not sure if lime, urea, etc can just be broadcasted without incorporation with any real degree of success).
Sorry for the long post, but any thoughts in general you have on the above scenarios would be warranted. I'm leaning towards trying to have a farmer plant 4 acres of beans and 4 acres of corn for me to give it a test run before making a big investment, but I really have very little doubt that adding some row crops into my food plotting arsenal is going to be very beneficial. Anyone have any idea what it would cost to have a farmer do some "custom planting" on a per acre basis (assuming the fields are easily accessible and they're using their own seeds)? Thank you for any input your suggestions you have!
Thomas
I’m new to this particular forum but was a long time follower and contributor back on the QDMA forums. In the last 5 years I’ve moved on to a couple new properties since the QDMA forum days and I now own a more diverse piece of northern MO property with some larger food plotting opportunities/needs. Here’s the background:
The property I recently bought is 200 total acres; of which 125 acres of that is enrolled in CRP. The slopes in the CRP are decent and the land was mostly tiled and terraced from years ago but has been in the CRP program for nearly 2 full enrollments. The land has a lot of good options for food plots and based on my contract I should be okay to put in around 10 or so acres of food plots. The list of equipment I own for food plotting includes:
1. Kubota L3830 (38 hp/30 hp PTO) with a front end loader
2. Pull behind 50 gallon boom sprayer
3. ATV/UTV mounted 25 gallon boom sprayer
4. 2 different 3 pt discs (a 5' and 6' I believe)
5. 3 pt mounted spreader & also chest/strap mounted seeders
6. S-tine cultivator (6 shanks)
7. 12' cultipacker
8. 6' brush cutter
A couple of the above in inherited with the farm I just purchased. I also inherited a 12 (I think) chisel plow that I don't believe my tractor can handle. For the last 5 years I've been only maintaining about 1.5 acres worth of food plots and so my needs were very easily met with small implements and hand spreaders. I primarily have been planting and maintaining clover and wheat/rye, which obviously don't require a ton of work/maintenance. I'd like to expand my abilities to include corn, soybean, sunflowers, etc and I don't feel like the equipment I've got is going to lend its self well to "row" type crops. Here are my options as I see it. Just curious what you all would do in this situation and good options or thoughts that I'm missing here.
1. Keep my current equipment and rely on contracting with a local farmer for row crop planting. The pros I see here are: 1. Minimal capital investment for me. 2. Minimal time requirement to actually do the work. 3. Potentially better crop outcomes since this person would obviously know what they're doing from a planting perspective. The biggest negative I see are finding someone to do this for me (which may or may not be a challenge since there are several very large local farmers near me) and the yearly cost to do the planting on an annual basis.
2. Keep my current tractor and purchase some additional food plotting equipment that my tractor is capable of handling. I don't think my tractor is capable of handling a true "no till" style drill from the limited amount of research I've done on the. I see some the lighter models are probably light enough for come with some issues relative to ground contact and seed depth. I would probably add a 6' tiller and some sort of grain drill to use after prepping the seed bed(s) with the cultivator/disc/tiller. Obviously this would come with a bigger time and effort from a mowing, spraying, tilling then planting perspective. And I've never used a drill or planter before so there'd be some sort of learning curve here. The investment in a planter/drill and tiller wouldn't be huge though.
3. Upgrade my tractor to something in the 90 hp range and find an actual no-till drill to go along with it. Obviously this would come with, by far and away, the biggest initial up front investment (although with some tax advantages as well). I don't know how to use a no-till drill but I'm assuming I could get a pretty good tutorial from wherever I bought the drill from, particularly if it's the same place that the tractor came form. My goal here would be to purchase a late model tractor (mid 2000s) and used drill in the 6-8' range. My assumption is that if I buy the right drill and tractor I could sell my smaller tractor and not really need ton of additional equipment to get where I want to be. As I understand it, I could mow, spray and then drill most seeds (not sure about corn). Not sure how easy it would be to make soil amendments if needed without till in them in (i.e. not sure if lime, urea, etc can just be broadcasted without incorporation with any real degree of success).
Sorry for the long post, but any thoughts in general you have on the above scenarios would be warranted. I'm leaning towards trying to have a farmer plant 4 acres of beans and 4 acres of corn for me to give it a test run before making a big investment, but I really have very little doubt that adding some row crops into my food plotting arsenal is going to be very beneficial. Anyone have any idea what it would cost to have a farmer do some "custom planting" on a per acre basis (assuming the fields are easily accessible and they're using their own seeds)? Thank you for any input your suggestions you have!
Thomas