Farming Video | Why Kelly Garrett is Planting Oats and Peas in Iowa

00:00:00 I'm standing in a field in Iowa and no, this is not corn that Iowa's known for. It's not even soybeans. This is oats and also peas. 00:00:08 Peas like you plant in your garden. Sweet peas. I'm with Kelly Garrett who's always doing some different stuff and we wanna share it with you. 00:00:15 This is not an Iowa normal scene. Also, it's not going to go into the grain bin and be sold like your typical commodities. 00:00:23 You're gonna bale this 'cause you're gonna make cow chow out of it. What are we talking about? We've got oats and peas here. 00:00:29 Uh, the reason we wanted to do this is twofold. Number one, we wanted to raise a more diverse ration. Two put into the chow. 00:00:36 You know, like with the nutrient density I've been talking about on the beef and things like this. 00:00:40 The more diverse the ration, the higher the nutrient density can go. Yep. So we um, we put in peas and oats. 00:00:47 The reason that we have the peas here is because of to raise the protein content. Certainly. Um, if we had the ability to, uh, green bale this 00:00:54 and then wrap it, we'd even have a higher percentage of pea because of the protein keeps going up. 00:00:59 We chose not to do that. You know, we're gonna allow it to dry like you typically would, alfalfa, things like that. And we're gonna bale it and then 00:01:05 we'll probably grind these bales. It will become part of the ration for the calf feed. And you know, there's hope here that the protein is gonna 00:01:12 be 18 or 20%. We'll have to test it when we get there, things like that. But yeah, this is, this looks at great feed. 00:01:19 And the second reason, oats is a natural deterrent or competitor of fusarium. Okay. Fusarium is our number one soil disease problem. 00:01:27 Right. So we're trying to push that back. So one concern, I mean, growing up on dairy farm, we'd always have a patch of oats. 00:01:33 It's hard to keep 'em clean. I'm sure the camera's looking out here and this bothers you as a farmer. 00:01:37 There's some horse weeds, some velvet leaf, a few grasses. You can't spray it and you certainly can't spray it when you 00:01:41 get the right when the peas are in there. Right. So you can't do a broadleaf treatment. No, but they'll bail. They'll 00:01:46 Bail. Yeah. Um, I was thinking about that very thing. You've had a lot of rain. This is very green, it's very wet. If you could make this into bailage as in keep it green, 00:01:53 it might be an easier chop. But with the dry weather, if you're getting a dry weather, you're gonna take this down to like 15 00:01:59 to 20% moisture and bale it. Yes. Okay. That would be the goal. And then from a yield standpoint, I mean we talk a lot about, okay, 00:02:06 why are you still going out and trying to make 65 bushel beans when that doesn't make you any money? 00:02:10 You're gonna make more money per acre on this. Yes. But run it through the cow. I I absolutely will. 00:02:16 And then there's a double crop scenario out here. We can, we will take these off and then, uh, we'll, you know, we'll make the fence hot 00:02:22 and we'll put cows and calves out here. We've got cows that are still calving. Yep. You know, and they'll calving July and August. 00:02:27 We'll put the cows out here. So it's a double crop scenario. What Are they gonna be eating? They 00:02:30 will be eating a cover crop that will drill back out here. There will be a Little bit of remnants of This. There'll 00:02:34 be some remnants of this. There's grass on the terraces grass around the outside. We'll drill a cover crop back out here, you know, 00:02:41 make it maybe some sorghum or something that'll ton up fast. We'll have to see. Yep. That's yet to be determined. 00:02:45 But, uh, my land cost on cows is $125 per cow. Yep. On, on the grass costs. There's another $75 in forage, which this has figured into. 00:02:54 Yep. But now the cows that are still in the yard that we can put out here in the double crop. Yep. This gives me $125 per cow coupon. 00:03:02 'cause I don't have to supply another piece of land to put 'em on. Got it. And then granted you have hills. 00:03:06 We talk about it a lot. You're getting an erosion, uh, control situation here. This stuff's great for the ground. 00:03:10 Do you get residual on this? Is this doing anything for next year? Uh, The piece should be putting some nitrogen in the ground. 00:03:16 Got it. You know, when, uh, the residual to me truly is the fusarium competition. Okay. If you drove within 50 miles of radius of, of this field, 00:03:23 is this gonna be the only oats I'm gonna see? Because I don't think outside of Manitoba there's oats, uh, anywhere close to this. Uh, 00:03:29 There we might find a few, but I bet we don't need both hands accountable. His name's Kelly Garrett. I'm Dave Mason coming at you 00:03:35 from a mixture of oats and peas. Peas, just like you plant in your garden, it's gonna become cow chow. 00:03:39 It's also gonna have some agronomic benefit to it. It's got some erosion benefit to it. Most importantly it's doing the diversification of income 00:03:46 as well as the soil. That's right. The nutrient aspect of it. Till next time, extreme ag coming at you from the hilly oat 115 00:03:53.045 --> 00:03:54.165