Air March 26, 2003

Thank you Gary, and good morning everyone. Last week’s rain was a very pleasant sight. It helped the wheat, it helped the brome and the alfalfa and it helped the pastures!

We haven’t talked about pastures for a while, so it’s time to bring those back in the spotlight. It’s going to be April before long and so many important pasture management decisions are going to be made in the month ahead. The first thing you need to be doing is determining what your stocking rate is going to be this year. I’ve been giving a lot of suggestions that stocking rates need to be changed to give the grass a chance to catch it’s breath this year. Right now is a good time to go out and take a look at your pastures. If you see a lot of cheat type grass moving in or a lot of cool season grasses starting to green up, then this should be a red flag that there has been some serious over grazing going on for more than just one year. If you find that there’s simply a few sedges and forbs starting to turn green then even if there isn’t much dead grass out there, the pasture’s base is still in pretty good shape. A pasture that is starting to show serious invasion needs some serious adjustments to stocking rates and length of season. For cows with spring calves, these pastures should be stocked at about 15 acres per cow calf pair. And if it turns dry again this year we may need to pull those cattle off in August to give what little desirable grass is there a chance to rest and start to build up some reserves. I seldom recommend complete rest for a pasture and very light stocking rates can do more good than total rest. Now, if you’ve got one of those pastures that isn’t showing much invasion by cool season grasses, you can probably consider a 9 to 12 acres per cow calf pair this year, BUT keep a close eye on the grass condition come early August and be ready to reduce rates if it has dried out. Finally, how about burning. Briefly, if you have enough fire AND you haven’t burned for a couple of years you may want to consider it this year. We’ve got pretty good soil moisture profiles which is one of the first requirements. But make sure you don’t get in a hurry. We have way too many pastures being burned way too early. Think April 20th as the absolute earliest date and then hold off as late as possible, even towards the first of May!

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

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