AIR JULY 22, 1998

Thank you Mark and good morning everyone. As most of you are aware the Geary County Free Fair is next week so until that is over I’m going to be pretty hard to get ahold of. If you have something pressing call the Extension Office and if I’m not there PLEASE leave your name and phone number and as much information as possible regarding your question. For lawn and garden questions I will not be able to make on site visits now until after August 1 so if you can bring your problem plant specimens into the office you’ll have a much better chance of getting an answer!

July is hay making time. Our native hay harvest is always an attempt to balance forage yield with forage quality. By harvesting in that early to mid July period we do a good job of maximizing the pounds of protein that we harvest per acre. Unfortunately I seem to see more and more hay harvest moving into early, mid and even late August. This isn’t good! Hay harvested in August will often have protein of less than 5%. Forages with less than 5% crude protein often take more energy to digest them than the animal gets back out of it. I think I’ve heard of human diets like that - all you eat is broccoli and celery and then you lose weight, and often become malnourished. Get that hay harvest wrapped up by the end of July. What you harvest after that will probably only be fit for mulch. The other problem with late harvest is the negative effect it has on species composition. Late hay harvest puts the desirable plants behind the 8 ball and allows undesirable grasses, weeds and shrubs to more easily invade your pastures. The bluestem and indiangrass need 8 to 10 weeks of good growing AFTER harvest to restore food reserves for next year. So cut early for the sake of your pasture and it’s long term productivity. Finally, let’s be getting those forages tested for feed value. We’ve had unusual growing conditions this year and unusual growing conditions give us unusual feed values. Some of the bromegrass, that was put up in a timely fashion and sure looked good, has come back quite low on protein, in some cases as low as 7% protein. Let’s adapt an old soil testing adage here and say, when it comes to formulating cattle rations don’t guess, forage test! If you need information on how to do that or where to send your samples then give me a call, after the fair if you don’t mind!

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

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