Air March 7, 2001

Thank you Mark, and good morning everyone. With the meeting just getting over with last night, I haven’t had time to pull my thoughts together - so some thoughts on that next week. This round of winter meetings is just about over with. I am still working on a couple of other hot topics meetings that may yet fall together in the next couple weeks. What we’re working on is one on farm trucks, load limits and licensing requirements. Seems to be a lot of interest in that so we’re trying to get the appropriate folks lined up for an educational meeting on that. Also seems to be some interest in use value appraisal and what has happened to farm land values this year. We’ll see what we can get together on that.

As wet as it is, it may seem silly to even bring this up BUT, if you have some bromegrass, either pastures or in waterways, that you want to burn, try to get it done as soon as possible. That spring growth is getting ready to explode. I’m not saying that we will, but we could see a good brome crop this year. The trick may be in getting enough dry days to get it mowed, dry and baled in a timely fashion. It’s plenty sloppy out there right now, but if you just haven’t been able to get your brome or alfalfa fertilized, there’s still time. You’ll need to hurry, but if you’re going to tear everything up, think twice before you do it. Alfalfa is just starting to break dormancy. You can’t see it from the road yet, but trust me it’s happening. If you wanted to get a dormant season herbicide on, it’s probably too late. This could be a field by field case, so if you really want to try it, let’s go look at the field together. I just received a Summer annual forages variety test report in the office late last week. What I liked about this report was that one of the sites was at Strong City. Last year wasn’t a great year, but there were some interesting results in spite of the drought. The trial was also planted under irrigation at Colby. The forages were either corn hybrids, forage sorghums or sorghum sudan hybrids. In both dryland and irrigated, the corn and forage sorghums produced about the same amount of dry matter yield. In both trials the sorghum sudan varieties produced an average of 35% more dry matter yield. Granted, the sorghum sudans were harvested twice but still. And here’s what caught my eye. The protein of the corn hybrids was higher than the forage sorghums, BUT the sorghum sudans were about 40% higher in protein. Stop by the Extension Office to pick up a copy of this interesting variety trial!

This is Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent, with Ag Outlook 2001.

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