Air January 12, 2000

Thank you Mark, good morning everyone. Don’t let your guard down. This is January, this is Kansas and it really is winter. Winter weather could be back any day - make sure you stay prepared up through the first of April! I, for one, would prefer to see just a little more seasonal temperatures right now... Too early too nice this weather is!

Tomorrow evening, Thursday, January 13th, starting at 7:30 p.m. at the 4-H/Sr. Citizens Building, we will have a beef cow nutrition and forages meeting. I’ve been teasing you for sometime about having some figures together on some recent forage tests that were done. And, as anticipated we’ve got some interesting results. Alfalfa, put up by the same producer from the same field - the only difference was first cutting versus 4th cutting. 17% crude protein vs. 26% crude protein. That’s a 65% difference. Now, are you going to feed those two cuttings of alfalfa the same? You darn well shouldn’t. A ton of the first has 340 pounds of protein, a ton of the second has 520 pounds of protein. We ran 25 alfalfa samples through, anywhere from 1st to 4th cutting. The range was 15% to 26%. The average was 19% which isn’t too bad. WE normally figure that early bloom alfalfa is going to be around 18% and mid-bloom is 16%. We’re running well ahead of that. This is valuable information that you can use to better balance your rations, improve cattle performance and ultimately save money or make more money. On the other hand, some of the bromegrass data was downright scary. We use average figures for bromegrass, late bloom of 16% protein. We had 14 samples and they ranged from 4.5% to 12.9%. The average was only 7.4% Okay, you and I both know that this was a crummy spring to be trying to put up bromegrass. BUT, you need to take that into account when you start feeding that bromegrass. There were also a couple of fields put up way too late, but even still, average cut date was June 10th. That’s probably a bit later than we should be cutting. Prairie Hay also ran a little bit below where we’d like to see it, meaning lower even than brome. Time doesn’t allow me to elaborate on that, so you’ll just have to come out to the meeting tomorrow night to hear the rest of the story!

This is Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent, with Ag Outlook 2000.

Return to Radio Home Page

Return to Ag Home Page