Brome Seed

So this blog is much delayed. We were doing this around the end of June, beginning of July. Sorry I'm so far behind. I didn't realize this was such a speciality crop for just a few counties in northeast Kansas until our next installment of Leadership KFB and was talking to Beth (who is from Northwest Kansas) and she didn't have any idea what I was talking about. These videos are not high quality, but I tried. 

This is the actual cutting of the brome seed. It is the yellow/brownish part on top of the brome grass. It is very light and will easily blow away if there is a lot of wind. 

Since it is so light, it doesn't run our of the combine onto the truck like corn or soybeans does. It's very fluffy. Therefore, to get it out, someone has to push it out. That's what Matt is doing. He's using a piece of PVC pipe to get an opening in it so it will fall into the auger. This is very dangerous to do. There are augers at the bottom of the bin that could seriously injure or kill somebody if they fell in the bin. Extreme caution must be used. 

Another video of pushing the brome seed out. 

It comes out very slowly. 

Since it's so light and fluffy you waste a lot of truck or trailer space if you don't stomp it down and add more. It's just like grape stomping, just less fun. Brome seed will stick to your clothes and get wedged in your socks and not come out unless you pick it out one piece at a time.

Brome seed is a lot of manual work. It can be time consuming. However, since it's such a specialized crop with few places able to grow enough of it to make it worth cutting, it's normally worth our time to cut. After cutting the brome seed off, we put up the bottom part for hay. If buyers aren't buying brome seed in a certain year, the brome seed isn't cut. We mow it with the rest of the hay to be fed to cattle in the winter. 

Hopefully that gives you a little big of an idea about what brome seed is. After being harvested it is taken and cleaned and bagged. Then it is shipped all over the United States and world to be used for a variety of different things. It's definitely not my favorite thing to do on the farm, but it must be done. 

Have a great week!!!