Planting Cover Crops Into Seed Corn: The Hiniker Inter-Seeder System

0:00 The same operation they not only raised commercial corn and soybeans, but they're also growers of seed corn. So what they do to plant their cover crops into the seed corn is use this apparatus here in front of us. It goes on the front end of a high-boy, their herds and herd spreaders, and they'll spread their cover crop using this during male destruction and for those of you that.

0:42 Aren't familiar what male destruction is? If you go by a field and you see four rows standing and one or two that's been chopped, that's male destruction. They in seed corn production they destroy the male. The male rows so this system actually works very very good in the fact that male destruction usually is done midday mid-August things like that, and usually there's irrigation events after that's all so we can help germinate the cover crop that way.

1:21 You want to have the hanky. Know this systems work good for us. We put two-seaters on here to increase our capacity as we've tried more diverse mix than our seed corn rotations. You know we started out doing just mainly turnips and radishes like Dean talked about earlier in advanced on doing some studies as far as what cover crops are giving us the best growth as far as grazing for cattle and nutrient cycles. So as we increase the diversity in our cover crop mixes we need more capacity.

1:56 So tends to work very well. Most of sea corn plants female plants that are left at male distraction time, usually around 5 feet tall you lost sunlight down in there and have tremendous success with the process.

2:10 Realistically when we start when we started interceding with cover crops we used those herd spread spreaders on the front end of the highboy the first year I guess we had we had decent luck but when we figured up the poundage that we planted out there it was somewhere.

2:29 Around 70 pounds per acre, which is way far out of what we were shooting for. So from there we transitioned into a redneck system where we took some John Deere insecticide boxes and revamped those to basically drop that behind the fertilizer rig and Heinicke rolling shields to kind of incorporate that. The big issue that we had there was calibration with what the interceding mixes—it just didn't hit where we wanted it to. So we used that one year and then from there it went to the iron.

3:20 With that in mind, Ken and the boys decided to purchase this system that you see behind us here. And as far as I'm concerned, I've been really happy with the results of the emergence of the cover crops and stuff like that. With that, I'll turn it over to Ken. He can give you some particulars about this. I think one of the biggest things we learned with all the things we tried, trying and failing, we were at a cover crop meeting hosted by one of our local.

3:58 Seed corn dealers and we heard a guest speaker asked us do you guys broadcast your corner do you plant your corn and I think that's when it kind of really clicked for us that it was all about getting the seed in the ground at proper depth and proper rate and so that's what brought along the Henniker interceder this one set up we are on 30 inch rows the two row units are spaced eight inches apart with a double disc opener with a leading disc edge and that allows us to control our rate great will rage.

5:12 Into the monitor and in the tractor, and for the most part it's very, very accurate. Which if you're buying seed, that's important, especially when you get into the more high-dollar stuff as far as the cover crops.

5:30 I think they're very happy with that, and me as a person that works for the University and on these experiments and things like that, but that's important there too, that we have that kind of precise on what we've got out there so we can teach and other.

5:55 Really nice thing about this unit is, unlike these herd spreaders which have very limited capacity, you said this seventeen, eighteen hundred pound capacity in this box here. So you can go out and plant. Depending on the mix, you know, anywhere from probably seventy to you know two hundred acres depending on what you're doing. So you can cover a lot more ground before you have to stop and fill again. As I say before, not finesse lead that we're variable rate.

6:22 Seeing that this is set up an electric drive and a speed sensor so as we change speeds we maintain our proper rate going through the field versus in the past when we tried to use different systems and try different things where you're on a fixed rate and so you know to maintain the exact same ground speed going through the field so they could be more precise when they order seed from your head and how fast you travel through if I was just going to say all depending on your ground conditions a.

6:50 Slow speed of seven eight miles an hour where we've got some really nice smooth ground we've ran 12 mile an hour with it. Yeah, you really cover somebody. Yes, you can. You know, it only covers twenty foot at a time but when you're moving ten to twelve mile an hour with it really you're only limiting factory slowing down for the pivot tracks.

7:14 So it's been a great investment, it's been a great tool. I think it's helped us a long ways as far as becoming a little bit more successful with what we're doing.