2020 Cover Crop Conference Presentations

Deloris Pittman Author

02/28/2020 Added

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2020 Nebraska Cover Crop and Soil Health Conference presentation - Cover Crops by Helicopter: FAQ - Brent Wulf, Owner and Chief Pilot, Hexagon Helicopters Inc.

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[00:00:21.250]Okay, we'll go ahead and let Brent--
[00:00:23.677]-I've actually worked with Brent this past year
[00:00:26.160]for those of you that have worked with me in the past.
[00:00:28.490]I've been advocating for people to add another crop
[00:00:30.820]to the rotation, so I've been working on wheat.
[00:00:33.420]And, Brent actually did a lot
[00:00:35.280]of the custom fungicide spraying.
[00:00:37.290]When you have a lot of small 10, five-acre fields
[00:00:40.550]on pivot corners, a helicopter comes in handy.
[00:00:43.734]So, we did appreciate Brent's work this year,
[00:00:45.850]working with some of those wheat growers.
[00:00:47.400]So, thanks.
[00:00:48.233]All right, can you hear me?
[00:00:49.560]All right, thanks Nathan.
[00:00:51.070]Yeah, like Jay said, this is a first speech
[00:00:54.030]since high school.
[00:00:54.870]So, we'll stumble through it.
[00:00:57.120]Yeah, I'm Brent Wulf, Hexagon Helicopters.
[00:01:00.820]Our shop is about 20 miles northeast of here,
[00:01:04.750]west of Bennington.
[00:01:06.080]Our shop we do mostly eastern Nebraska.
[00:01:09.160]We do get into Iowa, little in Kansas,
[00:01:11.340]and Oklahoma at times.
[00:01:12.970]Mostly we try to stay around here though.
[00:01:15.210]We do liquid, as you can see that in the load truck,
[00:01:18.140]and the spray boom was in the tank underneath.
[00:01:20.990]And, we do cover crop, and this is our bucket right here
[00:01:23.720]in the corner.
[00:01:24.830]And, we've been keeping busy with that.
[00:01:28.610]We've been in business two years.
[00:01:29.660]I've been doing Ag work since 2004.
[00:01:32.320]Little airplane, little helicopter mixed in.
[00:01:33.332]I'm definetly
[00:01:34.474]I'm a helicopter guy, so I kinda stuck with that route.
[00:01:38.648]Two years ago, struck out on my own,
[00:01:41.880]and so far so good.
[00:01:43.060]So, we'll talk about cover crops today.
[00:01:50.060]We get a lot of questions.
[00:01:53.920]I'm sure most people here have know
[00:01:56.600]that you can see with an airplane.
[00:01:57.830]We got a show of hands, most people know that.
[00:02:00.170]How many have actually used an airplane?
[00:02:02.690]Okay.
[00:02:03.523]How many people before this conference knew you could do it
[00:02:05.420]with a helicopter?
[00:02:07.170]Very many.
[00:02:08.003]How many have actually used a helicopter?
[00:02:10.770]Fair amount, all right.
[00:02:12.600]So, I get a lot of questions.
[00:02:14.380]Guys call, asking all kinds of different stuff.
[00:02:17.033]When Keith called me and asked me to present here,
[00:02:20.070]that was kind of the natural part of this presentation
[00:02:22.600]is what all's it take?
[00:02:24.160]It's equipment, when do you do it, how long's it take,
[00:02:26.686]all that good stuff.
[00:02:28.500]So, just to go through that.
[00:02:30.837]You need equipment to do it.
[00:02:32.570]You wanna pick your seed.
[00:02:34.240]When to do it?
[00:02:35.380]How much?
[00:02:36.260]Two things we've learned along the way, tips.
[00:02:39.670]Why guys do it by air?
[00:02:40.970]And then, we'll have some questions at the end.
[00:02:43.660]So, first off, you need the equipment.
[00:02:46.440]We've got, it's a 2005 Robinson helicopter,
[00:02:50.510]built in California.
[00:02:52.250]It's a piston engine, it's six cylinder air cool,
[00:02:55.290]burns Avgas, which is basically fancy gasoline,
[00:02:58.240]expensive gasoline.
[00:03:00.112]Yeah, built in California.
[00:03:03.130]Pretty reliable.
[00:03:03.963]Fairly, relatively speaking,
[00:03:05.520]they're cheap to operate
[00:03:06.930]which is good for everybody.
[00:03:09.950]Equipment, key piece for the seeding is the bucket.
[00:03:13.140]My wife was nice enough, most of the time,
[00:03:16.840]to let me use her space in the garage one winter.
[00:03:19.650]And I built that in my garage,
[00:03:22.180]with a lot of trial and error and a lot of redoing things
[00:03:25.350]to get it work right, but it works good now.
[00:03:29.650]Swath width, we can get, depending on the, I guess,
[00:03:33.360]the ballistics of the seed, how far it flings it,
[00:03:36.240]we can get up to 100 foot swath.
[00:03:38.170]A lot of what we do is cereal rye stuff
[00:03:40.200]Usually we run that at 70.
[00:03:41.960]If we get oats or something not quite as
[00:03:44.693]a little more fluffy,
[00:03:45.526]we'll go down to 50 or whatever fits the seed.
[00:03:49.950]Holds 18 cubic feet if you fill it to the top.
[00:03:51.913]Fill it to the top, the winds
[00:03:53.500]going to blow a fair amount of it out.
[00:03:56.960]We usually carry 400 pounds of seed in this.
[00:03:59.140]Which typically, cereal rye type thing
[00:04:01.420]is about half full.
[00:04:02.980]If you got oats or whatever, starts two thirds
[00:04:05.310]whatever.
[00:04:07.040]Empty, it weighs about 185 pounds.
[00:04:09.270]You can see the little Honda,
[00:04:11.580]just like on your lawnmower.
[00:04:12.510]Five in a half horse Honda.
[00:04:13.940]There's a little spinner, a little belt
[00:04:15.970]you can kind of get the idea there.
[00:04:19.220]Lets see.
[00:04:21.810]The gate mechanism, they actually sell these buckets.
[00:04:24.330]Company out of New Zealand makes a lot of them.
[00:04:26.490]They're like 25,000 dollars if you wanna buy one.
[00:04:29.370]So, that's another reason I wanna build my own.
[00:04:33.383]Everybody seemed to have their own issues.
[00:04:35.810]The New Zealand one, super expensive,
[00:04:38.290]the gate mechanism I didn't like.
[00:04:40.690]There was a company in Oregon that makes them,
[00:04:42.610]they're made for fertilizer, so the spinner
[00:04:45.640]from where the seed drops out,
[00:04:46.810]and the spinner is about a foot of just falling.
[00:04:51.020]Well, you're flying 60 miles an hour
[00:04:52.640]through the air, most of your seeds gonna get
[00:04:54.760]blown out the back before it ever hits the spinner.
[00:04:57.390]So I decided I would make my own little design.
[00:05:00.980]This is a gate mechanism, we actually
[00:05:02.270]got it patented.
[00:05:03.110]That was a-uh interesting process in itself,
[00:05:06.750]but this gate mechanism, this is when I was testing it.
[00:05:10.180]There's actually an actuator that sits right in here,
[00:05:12.620]It's a 24 volt, like an industrial actuator,
[00:05:16.760]but we can control the gate opening
[00:05:18.500]from inside the helicopter, just a little knob.
[00:05:21.070]So, this piece basically plugs the hole,
[00:05:24.817]and then when you flip the switch to turn it on
[00:05:26.650]it pulls up, and you can adjust
[00:05:28.380]how far out it pulls.
[00:05:30.490]There are some taper, you can kind of see the taper
[00:05:32.340]right there at the bottom, also some slots there.
[00:05:35.140]We wanted to be able to go from 100 pounds,
[00:05:37.870]down to less than 10 and still be able to accurately
[00:05:41.870]gear it.
[00:05:44.480]Another key components have a load-it.
[00:05:46.010]A lot of guys, I've known guys that load
[00:05:47.970]from a 5 gallon bucket.
[00:05:49.190]You can imagine how long that takes.
[00:05:51.850]This is a seed tinder,
[00:05:52.740]just like anybody uses to fill a planter.
[00:05:56.120]That's how we load it, and this is kind of our load bag.
[00:06:00.260]As I'm out spreading one load,
[00:06:02.960]Taylor here is uh basically augering into this bag,
[00:06:06.550]and there's a load cell set up right there,
[00:06:08.560]so we can know exactly how much for calibration.
[00:06:11.360]We know we got 400 pounds or 410, or whatever it is.
[00:06:14.910]So, that works pretty slick, and it's quick to load
[00:06:17.320]10-15 seconds, we're back going again,
[00:06:19.890]so it goes pretty quick.
[00:06:21.990]Another thing you need is a good loader guy.
[00:06:23.900]This is Taylor right here, he's sitting right out there.
[00:06:27.420]He's been with me since the start, he's been great.
[00:06:29.640]It'd be harder to do it without a good guy on the ground.
[00:06:32.643]A little collared green right there,
[00:06:35.560]threw that next to the shop,
[00:06:36.710]when we were cleaning out the bucket,
[00:06:38.600]it grew obviously pretty well.
[00:06:42.050]So we got equipment, we need seed.
[00:06:44.330]We need uh, typically most, probably half
[00:06:46.980]of what we do is straight cereal rye.
[00:06:50.632]It's fairly cheap, easy, it just works.
[00:06:54.870]Guys as they get more different goals in mind,
[00:06:57.760]you know radish, turnip, buckwheat,
[00:06:59.540]all the things everybody else has been talking about today.
[00:07:01.760]People throw those in, depending on
[00:07:02.840]what they're trying to accomplish.
[00:07:05.100]This last year we had quite a bit of oats.
[00:07:09.328]It works as good as anything, seems to,
[00:07:10.710]and it winter kills depending on what you're wanting.
[00:07:15.200]Seed, how much?
[00:07:16.130]So typical way I was talking, cereal rye
[00:07:19.686]40-60 pounds.
[00:07:20.720]We've done anywhere from 20 to 120,
[00:07:23.930]which with 400 pound loads,
[00:07:25.590]that takes a while.
[00:07:26.550]So, as you can imagine.
[00:07:30.150]Yeah, do a lot of 25-40,
[00:07:33.230]cereal rye tends to bump up the pounds though,
[00:07:35.510]get 40 or 60.
[00:07:36.860]Had a lady call a month ago, asked for 2 pounds of turnips.
[00:07:42.060]So, you cover a lot of ground doing that,
[00:07:43.920]versus 120 pounds.
[00:07:47.760]Tips for aerial,
[00:07:48.810]there were some guys talking earlier up here.
[00:07:50.770]Rye grass, from an applicator standpoint,
[00:07:53.280]I don't like it.
[00:07:54.440]It's fluffy, it's hard to spread.
[00:07:56.880]If you can imagine trying to throw a golf ball,
[00:07:59.600]and then rye grass would be like throwing a feather.
[00:08:01.870]It just doesn't work,
[00:08:04.480]and if you do get it to spread out,
[00:08:05.750]and there's any sort of wind,
[00:08:06.720]it's gonna to float around, and skips whatever,
[00:08:09.500]not a good stand I guess.
[00:08:12.805]Hard seed, the seed guy this morning
[00:08:16.070]was talking about getting your seed tested,
[00:08:17.640]and all that good stuff.
[00:08:18.760]That is a good idea, we have a fair amount
[00:08:21.360]of guys that will buy seed from the neighbors
[00:08:23.640]we'll put it on.
[00:08:24.740]It's still probably a good idea to get a Germ test.
[00:08:26.710]Just cause you never quite know.
[00:08:29.540]We had one guy, neighbors harvested,
[00:08:31.470]he was in a hurry, he was trying to plant beans.
[00:08:34.280]He was harvesting when it was basically raining.
[00:08:36.990]So, harvested that in June or July, whenever it was.
[00:08:40.120]We show up in early September,
[00:08:41.860]and he had an old gravity wagon,
[00:08:43.690]and it was, it just stacked, I mean,
[00:08:46.760]it would cake up 3 feet and then a big chunk would,
[00:08:50.510]amazingly though, most of it grew.
[00:08:52.340]I could not believe it.
[00:08:53.670]He wanted to put it out, he said "I don't care,
[00:08:55.210]it's what seed I got" he wants to put it out.
[00:08:58.500]Seed as far as clean, a lot of guys ask
[00:09:00.350]if you need to clean the seed?
[00:09:02.730]For us, it's not necessarily required.
[00:09:04.630]It's probably a good idea if you've got weed seed
[00:09:06.210]or whatever going on.
[00:09:08.460]This type of thing, a little fluffy stuff,
[00:09:10.460]not a big deal.
[00:09:11.800]This stuff here, you get straw like that in there,
[00:09:14.550]and you'll have old Taylor over there
[00:09:16.080]cussing at you, cause it plugs up the screens,
[00:09:18.480]and it doesn't flow through the bucket very well
[00:09:20.120]if you get very much of it.
[00:09:22.130]If you do use the last bit of the bin
[00:09:23.570]that's usually where all the fluff is.
[00:09:26.410]Yeah, that tends to cause problems with flow
[00:09:29.110]and a lot of other things too.
[00:09:31.270]So, you got your equipment, got your seed,
[00:09:32.490]when do you do it?
[00:09:34.300]Most of the time, it's in the fall for us.
[00:09:36.960]Corns, 8 foot tall, beans are waist high.
[00:09:40.910]April 15th, guy's will start kicking doors.
[00:09:44.180]September, first-second week of September
[00:09:46.740]is probably the peak of it guys are most interested in it.
[00:09:49.140]We'll go into October, sometimes into November,
[00:09:51.600]that starts to get pretty late,
[00:09:52.850]you don't get a lot of fall growth out of it.
[00:09:55.770]Beans, we don't do a lot of beans,
[00:09:57.400]probably 80 percents on corn.
[00:10:01.240]But yeah, usually wait,
[00:10:02.450]a lot of guys directed me into waiting
[00:10:03.590]till the first leaves start to turn yellow on beans,
[00:10:06.050]in order to get it to,
[00:10:07.220]especially if you've got thick stand,
[00:10:08.650]there's no sunlight gets in there,
[00:10:10.200]makes it a little tough for it.
[00:10:13.480]Most of our stuffs in the fall,
[00:10:14.510]we have done some in the spring before
[00:10:18.660]guys were just talking about that.
[00:10:20.820]We can do it if your applicator can't do it,
[00:10:22.900]then we'll wanna do it, look for another applicator I guess.
[00:10:27.360]But yeah, this is some actually Chad Christianson
[00:10:29.710]about hooper.
[00:10:30.920]60 inch rows, we did this I wanna say
[00:10:33.106]first week of June, something like that anyway.
[00:10:37.630]But it works, it works good.
[00:10:39.710]Had a request for somebody in March.
[00:10:41.140]Just the other day a lady called me.
[00:10:42.830]So, why not, we'll try.
[00:10:47.010]Got those figured out, how much is it gonna cost?
[00:10:50.670]Seed prices, other people kind of covered that.
[00:10:53.960]Depends about how much you put on, what you put on.
[00:10:57.390]Our prices, we base it on a flat fee per acre,
[00:11:00.730]and then so much per pound.
[00:11:02.720]So, for most of these applications
[00:11:04.130]its just around about 12 to 15 dollars,
[00:11:07.640]that's the idea.
[00:11:09.220]Airplanes will probably be in the general vicinity.
[00:11:12.430]They typically, because it takes them so long,
[00:11:14.350]and so many loads they will charge for a certain rate
[00:11:19.080]50 pounds per acre say, a price for within 5 miles
[00:11:23.130]of the airport, or they might have,
[00:11:25.670]and then above that they'll have a price
[00:11:27.170]that's up to 10 miles, up to 20 miles.
[00:11:29.780]Price keeps going up.
[00:11:32.260]A lot of these programs obviously cost
[00:11:35.430]share stuff, NRCS,
[00:11:37.005]what county head you're in, what watershed you're in.
[00:11:40.310]Just talk to your local guys,
[00:11:41.720]and they'll stear you the right way.
[00:11:44.780]Tips for success on doing aerial.
[00:11:48.630]The three main thesis,
[00:11:50.490]soil contact, moisture, and sunlight.
[00:11:53.440]As you can see, that was right next to our shop,
[00:11:55.920]that's just old clay, nasty dirt,
[00:11:58.670]but they work, they get moisture, they sprout.
[00:12:01.470]I think a lot of the inner-seeding,
[00:12:02.730]you guys talking about I want to see the soil contact.
[00:12:05.160]I think in my opinion,
[00:12:06.600]that's because there's moisture in the soil
[00:12:09.380]so the seed maybe it gets moisture, starts growing
[00:12:12.470]3 to 4 four days my guys are used to seeing with their corn
[00:12:14.700]is how the ground,
[00:12:16.100]if you do broadcast it,
[00:12:17.640]you have to wait for those conditions
[00:12:19.370]to occur on the surface.
[00:12:20.960]So that may take a week or maybe even two.
[00:12:23.430]Just might have to be a little more patient.
[00:12:26.260]Moisture, it's good to have rain on it.
[00:12:29.750]Some guys will run their pivot around it.
[00:12:31.150]Soon as we get done, they'll run the pivot.
[00:12:36.140]Yeah, and sunlight, that's the next one.
[00:12:38.570]This picture doesn't do it justice.
[00:12:40.400]This is seed corn field,
[00:12:42.040]and this is the male row right here,
[00:12:44.060]another one over here.
[00:12:45.330]But, like I said it doesn't do it justice.
[00:12:47.060]This, in between the rows over here,
[00:12:48.790]is maybe four inches tall,
[00:12:50.628]where it got extra sunlight.
[00:12:52.430]Obviously it was seeded at the same time.
[00:12:54.120]Extra sunlight that was at least a foot tall,
[00:12:56.810]if not more.
[00:12:57.643]Really green, thick, looked great.
[00:12:59.850]But it's just, that's an easy trial,
[00:13:02.310]just got more sun.
[00:13:07.190]If you're looking for an applicator,
[00:13:09.660]it's a bit of trial and error
[00:13:10.660]to get your calibration right.
[00:13:12.530]Hopefully, you're not the guy
[00:13:13.500]that is the error part of that trial and error.
[00:13:18.450]Find your seed early.
[00:13:20.320]Last, uh 2008 a lot of guys
[00:13:23.250]must have got caught off guard
[00:13:24.440]when the seed suppliers started running out of rye,
[00:13:27.430]late in the year, they were mixing wheat in with it.
[00:13:30.120]Anyway, if you know you're going to do it
[00:13:31.500]line up your prep, line up your seed,
[00:13:33.300]the prices along with that problem,
[00:13:34.720]the prices go up.
[00:13:36.780]As far as getting on an applicator,
[00:13:38.870]get on a list early.
[00:13:39.703]Just call and make an initial.
[00:13:41.420]Say hey you know I'm thinking about
[00:13:42.510]doing this in two weeks or whatever.
[00:13:44.710]Guy that was talking about waiting for rain forecast,
[00:13:47.290]well if you do that,
[00:13:48.140]and the other ten guys do that as well,
[00:13:50.350]if you're not the first or second guy to call,
[00:13:52.420]you're going to be out of luck.
[00:13:53.660]So, don't plan on getting
[00:13:56.350]your stuff done the next day
[00:13:57.470]when the forecast comes out.
[00:14:00.250]Advantage for aerial.
[00:14:01.160]That's kind of a neat picture,
[00:14:02.200]that's a, I think that's a turnip
[00:14:05.060]right there in the crack.
[00:14:06.340]Just gets moisture, it grows.
[00:14:09.420]One of the advantages of aerial,
[00:14:10.580]you can cover a lot of ground.
[00:14:12.170]I think our best day this year was 800 acres,
[00:14:15.080]and it was a pretty heavy rate.
[00:14:16.740]We just, a lot of good fields.
[00:14:19.120]We put out 54,000 pounds I think that day.
[00:14:23.870]We don't, whether its beans,
[00:14:24.710]standing beans, corn, whatever,
[00:14:26.380]doesn't affect us.
[00:14:28.260]So, muddy, no problem.
[00:14:31.860]If you get it before the rain that's great.
[00:14:33.290]We've had some really really good stands
[00:14:35.030]the day after rain.
[00:14:36.460]Just, the humidity, whatever, it works good.
[00:14:40.550]That time of year the August-September time period
[00:14:42.910]guys are thinking about,
[00:14:43.890]or getting ready for harvest,
[00:14:45.570]and a lot of times people
[00:14:46.403]don't have the people or equipment
[00:14:48.313]available.
[00:14:49.450]They're tied up, or their minds on other things,
[00:14:51.530]or whatever.
[00:14:52.363]That's kind of where we come in.
[00:14:55.530]One reason to get it in early,
[00:14:56.410]rather than waiting till after harvest,
[00:14:58.960]you get more heat, sunlight, moisture,
[00:15:00.330]all the things you need to grow
[00:15:02.460]a good cover crop,
[00:15:03.710]and you get more grazing growth.
[00:15:05.550]The sooner you can get that seed out there,
[00:15:08.810]the more time it has to capture
[00:15:10.620]all these things,
[00:15:12.090]and depending on whether
[00:15:12.990]you want soil cover, root growth,
[00:15:15.610]all those things,
[00:15:16.700]the longer its out there,
[00:15:18.150]the more time it has to do those things.
[00:15:22.500]So, kind of covered what we needed.
[00:15:25.050]You got the equipment, got the seed,
[00:15:26.810]when to do it, how to do it,
[00:15:29.360]all those kinds of things.
[00:15:31.750]With that, the quick and dirty of helicopter seeding.
[00:15:36.160]Perfect, thanks Brent.
[00:15:37.736](Applause) - [Presenter] Give Brent a nice hand
[00:15:43.850]Brent as an aerial pilot,
[00:15:45.681]would you define your comment
[00:15:48.710]about fairly reliable.
[00:15:53.200]What was that referring to?
[00:15:55.020]Your helicopter.
[00:15:56.580]Oh, the helicopter itself?
[00:15:58.090]Yes.
[00:15:58.923]Oh, I think that was uh,
[00:16:01.890]I might have said reliable.
[00:16:03.000]I meant fairly cheap I guess.
[00:16:06.040]I know, I know what you meant.
[00:16:08.423]It's been pretty reliable though,
[00:16:09.754]we've only had a few little issues.
[00:16:11.418](Laughs)
[00:16:14.160]Well when
[00:16:15.050]If there is such a thing as a little issue.
[00:16:16.120]Well when he flew fungicide on my field,
[00:16:17.660]I didn't see any issues,
[00:16:18.590]I watched him the whole time
[00:16:19.560]to make sure he covered the whole field too.
[00:16:21.382](Laughs)

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2020 Cover Crop Conference Presentations

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