Air December 17, 2003

Thank you Gary, and good morning everyone. More odds and ends this morning. The end of the year is approaching and I still have a lot of tidbits in my radio program file folder that I'm trying to get used up.

I had a cattle producer visiting with me about why cows would take to one bale of hay much more readily than another. He had brought a sample of the hay that was not being consumed. It didn't smell or look moldy, and it wasn't overly stemmy, in fact it was quite leafy. Upon visiting with the producer it became apparent that he had bales from several different pastures with vastly different grasses. And this probably explained the problem. Cattle can be very discriminating in what they will eat and what they like to eat. This certainly explains the patchy grazing we see in every pasture. The cattle were holding out and not eating certain bales knowing that they could out last the producer. Fortunately, we're still in that part of the season when the cow's nutritional requirements are fairly low so we're going to try to outlast the cows and see if they won't start eating the other hay. In the meantime I'm sending in a sample to see what kind of nutritionial analysis these gals are turning their nose up at.

For landlords, the cut off date to give legal notice of termination of an oral lease for either pasture or cropland is January 29th. Contact me for more details on what constitutes proper notification.

The busy holiday travel season is just ahead. A lot of us will be spending a little or a lot of time on the road. PLEASE travel with all due safety considerations. Allow extra time for traffic, weather or breakdowns. Drive the speed limist or slightly below and if the road gets wet and or slick, slow it way down. Drive sober and wear your seat belt. Finally, travel with your lights on 24/7. Under ideal daylight traveling conditions, having your headlights, or driving lights on doubles the effective distance at which the other driver's mind says, hey, there's a car coming. AS driving conditions deterioriate that recognition distance increases exponentially. Let's all have a safe holiday travel season!

This is Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent, with Ag Outlook 2003.

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