Air August 7, 2002

Thank you Gary, and good morning everyone. Here we are a week into August and the weather pattern appears to be stuck with no strong evidence that it’s going to change. Watch pastures and if you think the beans aren’t going to make a grain crop and want to harvest them for forage, you need to do it before they lose their leaves. There are so important meetings coming up later this month. Our friends at the FSA are having a meeting on the 22nd regarding the new farm program - look for more details from them soon. The evening of the 22nd the Noxious weed office and the extension office are cohosting a sericea lespedeza education meeting. Look for more details on this one as well!

I have been trying to help some producers calculate forage needs for their cattle. Part of this has to do with CRP haying and some are just trying to figure out if they need to pare down herd numbers. Forage intake in cattle is dictated by two things. The first and obvious one is size and growth stage of the animal. A mature cow will eat more than a yearling. A lactating cow will eat more than a dry cow. Those are a couple of no brainers. The second big factor is quality of forage. Cattle will eat more of a high quality forage than a low quality forage. Kind of sounds like me and steaks - the better the steak the more I want to eat! Protein supplements will also increase forage uptake. Energy supplements don’t seem to make any difference, but protein does. A dry cow with low quality forage will consume 1.5% of their body weight of forage (on a dry matter basis). If it’s average quality forage 2% and high quality forage 2.5%. A lactating cow is 2%, 2.3% and 2.7% for low to high quality forage. The protein supplement will increase uptae two to three tenths of a percent for low and average quality forages only, no change for high quality forages. So, with average quality hay, for a spring calving cow still nursing, expect her to eat 2.3% of her weight per day in forage. A 1000 pound cow would eat about 23 pounds of average hay on a dry matter basis or about 25 pounds as fed. For reference, CRP emergency hay will be a low quality forage. These are a lot of numbers to try to remember in a short program. We do have a couple of good bulletins on cattle nutrition available at the Extension Office. Call or stop by and pick one up!

This is Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent, with Ag Outlook 2002.

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