Air October 30, 2002

Thank you Gary, and good morning everyone. Judging by the number of phone calls and visits. It is way too wet to be getting much work done. But I don’t think anyone really minds, least of all myself. If you still have some wheat you want to get in the ground, up the planting rate, quite a bit in fact. I think 90 pounds of seed per acre would be the minimum from here on and 100 wouldn’t be out of the question. The rain has been cold and is really dropping that soil temperature right now. In fact weekly soil temperatures have plummeted and as of yesterday morning, the soil temperature was around 47. Now, wheat will still germinate at that temperature, it’s just going to take some time. It also makes it more critical to have starter fertilizer in place to help out that young plant. Another fertility item that I think we need to be looking at is annual applications of potassium chloride, to the tune of about 40 or 50 pounds of KCl. Not so much because of direct potassium or chloride deficiencies, but because of some added protection from foliar diseases that have been showing up in many studies. We aren’t talking a lot of money here, just an extra 3.50 to 4 dollars per acre, or one or two bushels of wheat. We haven’t had a really bad foliar disease problem for some time, so this might be the year to give this a try!

We had a good beef meeting last night in Blue Rapids. I wish time allowed me to go into a little more detail, but let me highlight some of the program now, and maybe more details next week. Twig Marston, you remember him as our beef judge at the fair the past couple of years, was really hitting on the need to feed cows by body condition. We’ve got a good bulletin that describes body condition but it boils down to the simple fact that a fat cow doesn’t need as much feed as a thin cow. Instead of treating them all the same, split them up into 2 or 3 feeding groups. That way you can save money on the cows that don’t need extra feed and give the extra feed to the cows that need it. You may end up with the same feed cost, but you’ve achieved better performance. Along that same line, Gerry Kuhl talked about maximizing feedstuffs and a lot of that comes down to knowing what you have through testing..... But that’s the topic for another program.

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

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