When it comes to mower conditioners,
producers have three choices. Today, we're
going to talk with Tim Schnakenberg,
Regional Area Agronomist with University
of Missouri Extension. Tim, tell us about
some of the choices producers have in
mower conditioners.
Well, you've got
rollers and then you have the tine or
impeller type of conditioning that goes
on. With roller, you have steel and you
have rubber. And it's really kind of
personal preference, but they both can do
a very good job. Probably with the rubber
roller, that's a good choice for leafy
legumes, still yet aggressively breaking
that stem down. But for a steel roller,
works very well for longevity of that
roller and then also for aggressively
crimping real thick stemmed crops even though
you can run alfalfa through those, but
they work really good as well for the
thick stem crops such as millet and
sedan grass.
When it comes to tine or
flail type conditioning, it really is a
matter of what type of crop you have. And
so tall fescue and Bermuda grass and
crabgrass things like that works really
well for that.
From a mechanical action,
do they condition differently?
They do
condition very differently. A roller will
actually smash that stem and expose the
pithe to the environment so that it can
dry out a lot faster. The tine or the
flail conditioning is going to cause the
wax to come off of that and expose it a
little bit more to the environment that
way.
Sounds like that depending on the
type of crop that the guy is going to
primarily be in, you might be in a different type of conditioner.
Exactly.
Thank you, Tim. With the Makin' Hay  Minute, I'm Bryan Setzer.
Hope you enjoyed this episode of Makin' Hay Minute. Please check out some of these
other videos or find us at makinhay.com.
