Combines canola

Hey fella, just curious what kind of yields you were getting down there with the winter canola.

Silverseeder, No experience with winter canola. As for spring seeded canola, I recommend you swath. Too much chance of shatter losses if you leave standing. A good rule of thumb is to start swathing when you have a 40% seed color change from green to brown. At this point the canola plant is still quite green. I realize you may have to purchase a swather and a pickup head, but best way to go IMHO.

The yields were kind of all over the place. The worst field made about 300 lb._acre. It should have been destroyed and planted to something else. The best field made 1950 lb._acre. The yield monitor on the combine would hit 3000 and 4000 lb._acre occasionally. The whole farm average this year was 1150 lb._acre. We should have done a better job killing armyworms in the fall and we had a little bit of Finesse carry over from wheat. Three years ago when we grew the the stuff an 80 acre field averaged 3000 lb._acre. It has real potential if you can get a stand established. last fall when we planted it we had some nice rains to get the stand established.

I would suggest air real or air assist if your able to straight cut. That should keep it feeding with minimum loss at cutter bar. Slower sickle speed will likely help just of much or more than double cut. Some guys tried Canola around hear and had to much trouble swathing some varitys. You need a vertical sickle in the crop at times. I don't know how it is done but I've heard of guys rolling Canola and then going in and straight cutting when it dries down. Someone may know what that tool does. Don't know of anything special for sieve and chaffer other than some guys install a so called Canola board. That board is a nearly vertical panal fastened at back of chaffer. It is leaned back a bit and three or four inches high. It catches a few kernals that have made it to the back of the shoe and lets it fall back threw return to have another chance at saving it. Also heard of some guys cutting the front few louvers on chaffer loose so they can run it a fair amount opener to drop good portion of seeds in right off of grain pan. I've also heard it to be very important to start prepairation for harvest at the right time for you don't want the seed to light and you want to limit shatter loss. Good luck

Dan, The roller you speak of would be something similar to this.

Thanks for the super link Camshaft. I sure wondered about driving over the crop to lay it down. Didn't dawn on me they push it down with dividers to clear wheels and edges. For a minute I was thinking there may be new market dummy heads with pickup attachment down south but maybe not if they can do the pushing. By the way I've been wondering a long time where your nickname comes from. Thanks again

Thanks for the link, camshaft. Very interesting! lots of canola acreage in our area, although the run of dry seasons have knocked yields around. It is all windrowed [ swathed ] with consequent wind and pick up problems. Within about 2 or 3 years we will have mustard with canola grade oil. Canola and the Mustard will be able to be intermixed with out affecting oil quality. No more shattering. Direct heading with no more windrowing and drastically reduced problems with the "black leg" fungal disease and good yields in our 350mm [ 14 inch ] or less, winter rain fall zones. Cheers.

What size of windrow do you plan on picking up, and is the canola a huge cropIJ In most cases the 12 ft. would be adequate, but the 14 is nicer on corners. 14 has one extra belt, which needs just a bit more attention, since center belt will sometimes get looser because of longer roller, but this rarely happens. What pickup are you planning on using on head IJ

I haven't done any yet but if you look in the older messages there have been a few pointers for canola. Also check in the "Setting" topic area. Good luck

Where did you plant your canolaIJ Does it look like it will be any good. Picked up several acres in N.D. seemed to me the roller helped feeding just not to stop blowing and they used 30' head to swath. Any more info on the canola would be of great intrest. Thanks