The Flushing Bar Project

F

Flushing Bar Project

New member
Hi Folks,
I want to make sport hunters like you aware of our project here in Michigan. I am managing a grant to help balance grassland bird habitat with agricultural production. Though our main focus is song birds, game birds like pheasants turkeys also nest in hay fields. We have narrowed our focus down to the promotion of flushing bars for hay mowers, especially modern high speed and self propelled units. I have a substantial budget to provide equipment and payments to make this a risk free deal for farmers. I am seeking support from farm equipment manufactures to help adapt the proven Ducks Unlimited design to modern mowers. I have established a web site to gather design suggestions and provide information about the project as it proceeds. I invite everyone to take a look at the web site and contribute their thoughts either publicly or to my email. I especially could use help with engineering durable bars for some of our more complex projects and using cameras and DVRs to record mowing activities. I'll be sure to occasionally update this forum on our progress. My website link is at the end of this post.
Thanks


Mark P. Ludwig
Allegan Conservation District
Conservation Innovation Grant Technician

Balancing Agricultural Production and Grassland Bird Reproduction
269-673-8965 ex 4
616-240-7135 cell
mark.ludwig@macd.org

The Flushing Bar Project - Designing Wildlife Protection for 21st Century Forage Mowers

http://www.wix.com/markludwig/the-flushing-bar
 
Fabulous post and a great proactive program. Hope it spreads throughout the country, some may disagree, but I have seen catastrophic losses from moco in alfalfa. Not just pheasants, but everything from deer fawns to cotton rats and rattlesnakes. Keep us posted. A big ThankYou from uplanders everywhere, good news is hard to find, it brightens my day to see a hopeful project.
 
oldandnew said:
Fabulous post and a great proactive program. Hope it spreads throughout the country, some may disagree, but I have seen catastrophic losses from moco in alfalfa. Not just pheasants, but everything from deer fawns to cotton rats and rattlesnakes. Keep us posted. A big ThankYou from uplanders everywhere, good news is hard to find, it brightens my day to see a hopeful project.
Click to expand...

Wgat he said X 2!!!:cheers:
 
What's with Michigan and pheasants? First you guy put into place your Pheasant "blocks" project and now a "flushing bar". :thumbsup:

I'll run your site past a few farmers out here. One in particular cuts a lot of hay and is a big pheasant hunter.

I wish you the best of luck my friend and please do keep us up to date with how this is working out.;)
 
I guess I will be the pragmatist and point out a few things.

The flushing bar would have to swing from one side of the tractor to the other as most modern hay cutting equipment is "swung" from one side of the tractor to the other when cutting from one direction to the other.

For a tractor running a JD Moco this would require a 4th hydraulic outlet to run the swing of the flushing bar. A 4th hydraulic outlet is not a real common thing on most cutting tractors.

A bird or deer would have less than 2 seconds to react to the flushing bar before the mower got to them.

Most birds I run over are sitting on the nest and probably will not leave regardless of the flushing bar.
 
moellermd said:
A bird or deer would have less than 2 seconds to react to the flushing bar before the mower got to them.

Most birds I run over are sitting on the nest and probably will not leave regardless of the flushing bar.
Click to expand...


Moe, in your experience what percentage of hens actually flush from your hay cutting equipment vs. hens that stay on their nests?
 
Thats tuff to say because you don't see all the ones you hit. Maybe 50/50. A pure guess on my part.
 
Mark, great idea. I maintain all the CRP on my farm in central South Dakota. We have CP-37, FWP and CP5a and am in heart of prairie coteau duck nesting region and pheasant nesting is high too.

I would be interested in deploying a flushing bar on front of my mower tractor.

I also have access to an auto repair guy in town that can pretty much fabricate anything.

I could provide some video of how the bar works as I do a lot of mowing in the spring.
 
Flushing bar update 11282011

Hi folks,
Thanks for the interest in our project. Moe, you certianly make some good points. We do have one fellow with a swinging tounge mower as you discribe and figureing just how to swing that bar efficiently is one of our big challenges. I am pondering something like the mechanism used to swing school bus doors open, a simple lever to swing and pivot the bar linked via conecting rods. Obviously still in the design phase. Agreed hydralics are probably not in the cards. My main focus lately has been figureing out how to mount bars on self propelled mowers, as this is really what the bigger farms are using. I have some engineers working on this from a major OEM. We're looking at fiberglass frames to shove the bar out in front of the mower deck 8 feet or so; about as far as I figure most operators will be comfortable with but (hopefully) far enough out to give the bird time to jump. Keep in mind these disk mowers have a curtian in front of the blades; I think if the bird is airborn they could well bounce off the curtian to safety if they don't clear the deck. Overall flushing bars have been extremely effective flushing ducks (100% in some trials) with the slower mowers of the past. I think even if we are not that effective, the massive acreage covered by the targeted farms still adds up to a lot of birds. As before if folks have suggestions don't be shy about emailing me directly or via the website. The more ideas we hash out before we build the happier I'll be.
Mark Ludwig
 
I have seen homemade jobs with flushing bars which reach one full pass wider than the mower, to the sides in this case it was 14 ' and was an operational headache. some hens will regretably refuse to leave. If we could figure out a later maturing alfalfa, which was aphid proof and therefore not attractive to blister beetles when in bloom , and hold it's Relative feed value, and palatability,it would help a bunch, depending on weather, now producers try cut with the field about 10% bloom, after that alfalfa gets rank by the day, pest risks increase, regrowth delayed. alot of the first cut is concurrent with the hens nesting or brooding small chicks. In Kansas the preferred nesting rearing cover is winter wheat, allowing most rearing to be well along prior to cutting. Any improvement would save a lot of small wildlife, and certainly be welcome.
 
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