Air January 19, 2000

Thank you Mark, and good morning everyone. First thing up this morning we have an important meeting date change. The In-depth corn school has been rescheduled for Monday, January 31st from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the 4-H/Sr. Citizens Building. Even with the date change, this is going to be a very good meeting. We have an entomologist to talk about Bt corn and corn borers, we have a pathologist to talk about gray leaf spot, corn leaf rust and other diseases you don’t even want to know about, we have an agronomist to talk about plant populations and row spacings in both irrigated and dryland corn, we have a soil scientist to talk about your fertility program, have you checked your chloride levels lately?, and we’ll probably even have a little bit on precision ag and remote sensing. Like the one TV commercial says, it may be far out but its not far off. That’s Monday, January 31st, from 10 a.m. To 3 p.m., and lunch will be on your own.

Next Tuesday, January 25th there is an evening Cow Health and Management meeting in Clay Center. If anyone wants to go I’ll be driving, give me a call for details.

We had a really good beef cow nutrition and forages meeting last week. Several interesting discussions and tidbits of useful information came out of that meeting. The first one is probably no surprise. The quality of the bromegrass and prairie hay that was put up this year is some of the worst that we have seen for quite some time. In many cases, the crude protein is running ½ to 2/3 of normal. In some cases it is even worse than that. Simply feeding more of it isn’t going to help. Low quality forages tend to suppress feed intake of cattle. We really need to get that forage tested first of all. Why? So you know what you have to work with. If the protein is under 7% then a little grain and protein will help increase intake. Over 7% crude protein and extra protein won’t help. Of course this supplementation with grain when you have a forage based diet can get really tricky. It takes different microbes in the rumen to handle forage and grain, soif you’re not careful you have have a really confused cow in a hurry. You’re better off to use a little high protein soybean meal than more grain. Wheat mids are a really good option for these special cases. But it all begins with forage testing so you know where you are starting from!

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

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