AIR NOVEMBER 11, 1998

Thank you Mark and good morning everyone. The dampish weather continues and spirits sag. The fact that we’ve had the longest growing season in the last 50 years or perhaps longer does little to buoy the spirits when you can’t finish getting the crop out of the field. A quick reminder that swine day is coming up next Thursday, November 19th at the Holidome in Manhattan. Registration starts at 8:15 and the program at 9:20. Swine producers, plan to attend!

Cool wet conditions are not only tough on us, they are tough on cattle also. Probably nothing else but a nasty cold blizzard is as tough on wintering cattle as mud. They slog around through it, it weighs them down, it slows them down and it takes away their appetite. The trouble is that if you have mud then you also have rain or snow. Either one of these puts a wet hair coat on the animals and that makes it harder for the critter to stay warm. What does all this mean? It means that you the owner/manager of those animals need to take a lot more care in how you feed and care for those animals. Profits margins are so slim to nonexistent right now that you may question how much more time and money you can spend on them, but if you don’t take care of them right, I’ll guarantee that you’ll lose money! Let’s say that you have a group of pregnant cows out on winter pasture and you’re giving them alfalfa, prairie hay and commercial protein. You think you’ve got the ration balanced so that they’ll just maintain their weight. If you have an extended wet spell come along, like we’ve got right now, even if it isn’t muddy or overly cold, the only difference is a wet hair coat versus a dry hair coat, then all of a sudden those cows are losing one to two pounds a day. Add mud and it gets a whole lot worse, add a 10 degree drop in temperature for two weeks and it starts to turn into a disaster. It all goes back to knowing what you’ve got. You have to know the real weight of your cows, or steers or heifers, which is one of the reasons why we have portable scales that you can check out through the extension office, you have to know the quality of your feedstuffs. There is no way you can adequately balance a ration when you don’t have a clue what sort of crude protein and moisture you have in your hay and grain. Know what you’ve got, set realistic goals and then balance to meet those goals. Then hope that Mother Nature gives us a little better winter weather than we’ve had for fall!

This is Chuck Otte, County Extension Agent, with Ag Outlook '98.

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