Air March 8, 2000

Thank you Mark, and good morning everyone. Continued warm weather and nice rains have everybody’s spring fever running rampant... including my own!

Last week seemed to be one of those weeks filled with meetings every day or night. On the one hand the week seemed plenty long, but on the other hand I was able to listen to a lot of good speakers from various segments of the livestock industry. Before I get going with some thoughts about that, let me briefly address bermudagrass. Apparently there’s some aggressive advertising and promotion of bermudagrass for hay or pasture. Bermudagrass is one of those forage species that may have a niche for us here in the flint hills. It’s not perfect, but it does have potential. We honestly don’t have any recent Kansas studies and information, but I do have some very good information out of Oklahoma. One of the varieties that I’ve been seeing some of the literature regarding does not have a good yield record in Oklahoma. That’s all I’ll say right now. If you have been considering some bermudagrass please stop in and visit with me before you spend a dime.

Sticking with forages this morning I want to talk about one speaker that I heard last Saturday. This fellow is a cattle producer down towards Hutchinson. His entire effort has been in trying to minimize the cost of production of his cow herd and steers by maximizing his use of forages. He had a great quote that I want to pass on. "Put as little metal as possible between your cattle and the forage." Okay, what the heck does he mean by that? Simply put, utilize as much forage as possible in the field and minimize your harvested forages as much as possible. He showed one table, from a university east of here, that related the feed value and cost of production and harvesting of various feeds. Good native range in the pasture being grazed by cattle was given a value of 100. No harvest cost and very little production cost. The next best harvested forage was alfalfa hay with a value of 160. In other words, for pound of nutrient it was 60% more expensive. It got worse from there with grains winding up being 3 to 4 times the expense. This is really no surprise but it does bring home the point that while you can’t do away with harvested forages, maybe you can adjust your management, change tradition, and find ways to harvest less and graze more. Give me a call if you’d like more information!

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

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