Air July 30, 2003

Thank you Gary, and good morning everyone. The county fair is over and life is starting to return to normal. To everyone who helped at the fair last week, thank you very much. There are so many folks that pitch in in so many ways that it is impossible to keep track of them all and many would just as soon remain anonymous. But to each and every one of you - THANK YOU!

With everything getting dry this month, I guess you could call it crunch time in the pastures.. In more ways than one. But now is a very critical time to be checking your pastures and evaluating them for condition. A lot of pastures are really starting to go stale with the lack of rain. A lot of pastures are also showing a lot of dead cheat and downy brome. These are undesirable annual grasses that have moved heavily into pastures because of lack of cover the last year or two. In fact we are going to see a lot of weeds in pastures this fall because of lack of cover last year. Lack of cover can come from drought stress, overgrazing, and usually a combination of both. Herbicides are not the answer, adjustments in management are! If your pastures have stopped growing you better start considering some alternatives such as reducing stocking rates, supplemental feeding or whatever, but protect the forage you have left in your pasture. If all you have is dead cheat and other weeds, then you should be moving ALL cattle out of that pasture and resting it the rest of the season. The more bare soil you see in your pasture now, the more weeds you will have next year. I find it very interesting that hay meadows that were mowed the first part of July now have some nice regrowth and this regrowth is going to provide great cover and the meadows will probably be in great shape next year. But those meadows that are just now being mowed, and you should be through, may be in trouble!! The bottom line is that the pastures are still stressed and will need time to recover. Overgrazing will not allow them to recover and even what you consider to be normal grazing pressure, when they are stressed, is still overgrazing. Take time to walk through your pastures, look for grass, desirable grass and look for bare soil. If you need help, give me a call!

This is Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent, with Ag Outlook 2003, and I'll see you at the fair!

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