Air May 19, 2004

Thank you Gary, and good morning everyone.

Next Wednesday, May 26th will be the wheat variety plot tour at AgriPro's research facility on Ascher Road starting at 7 p.m. This is a great chance to see a lot of varieties planted side by side. Myself and an AgriPro rep will work our way through the varieties giving a quick overview of each variety and answer questions. For those of you not familiar, this is on the south side of Ascher road between Clark's Creek and Humboldt Creek, just a little ways west of Humboldt Creek. Ascher Road is the first east west through road south of I-70. No need to pre-register, just show up, enjoy the weather and take a look at some wheat!!

With frosts and everything else going on I haven't had a chance to talk about the 2004 Bluestem Pasture report. First a word of warning - this may be the last year for this report due to budget problems. Contact me for more information on this situation. This report always concerns me because I have cattle producer after cattle producer tallk to me and tell me that there's no way that you can rent pastures for the figures given in this report. So you can pretty well plan on the figures given as minimum figures. Prices are up ever so slightly this year. Cows with spring calves were 109.20 per pair, and double stock steers or heifers going in at 500 to 700 pounds were $54.10 a head. Now, a few things to keep in mind. The full season stocking period is generally considered to be May 1 to October 15th. In the future you may want to make sure that this is clear. And most early season double stocked leases are considered to be about 75 days or May 1 to July 15th. It is very important to get those cattle off those double stocked pastures by mid-July to give the grass a chance to recover. And if you take a look at the report, it's available from our office or on the web, contact me on how to get it either way, it gives acres of grass per head or pair. Keep in mind that this is acres of usable grass, not total acres in the pasture. And even still, I think the guaranteed acres are a little on the low side. For cows with spring calves the average is 7.2 - I'd feel better about 8 or 8.5, and for double stock 2.8 acres per head, I'd prefer 3 to 3.25. It's all in interpretation, but it also comes down to knowing and managing the resource!

This is Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent, with Ag Outlook 2004.

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