Air October 13, 2004

Thank you Jerry, and good morning everyone.

A lot of fall crops were harvested and wheat was planted ahead of those little showers. I imagine most of you are like I am, sort of torn between getting more rain to really do some good or having it hold off for a bit longer so more harvest can be completed!

With all of that corn and milo post harvest residue, I hope that more than a few of you are considering fencing that and utilizing it as fall forage for cow herds. For those spring calving cow herds, their fall nutritional needs are not that great. In fact, the leftovers in most corn and grain sorghum fields is more than adequate to take care of those gals for a couple of months. And if you've got some steers and heifers that you basically have on hand for backgrounding purposes, corn and milo stalkage will work just fine. Corn residue does seem to be much more fragile and losses it's quality much faster than milo residue. Therefore, if you have a choice, I would use corn stalks first. Hit it hard, make sure they have plenty of access to plenty of water and some trace mineralized salt and they should be fine. Then if you want to continue to hold them on stalks longer, you can switch over to the milo stalks later in the fall or winter. One question that always comes up is compaction from cattle on stalks. Does it happen or not? Sure, there is some compaction, especially around areas where they gather such as water, salt or mineral boxes or around a feeder if you later on move one of those in. Compaction is the number one reason given to me by landlords who don't want cattle turned out on stalks. BUT is that compaction any worse than that done my equipment? Not that I can tell. Our soils have a lot of clay and are subject to far more compaction than most producers want to admit. Even in no-till settings, we need to deep rip those fields every 3 to 5 years. Go ahead and graze the stalks. It's a good way to deal with some of that residue, you do get a small manure credit, and if you are landowner, you can also get a chance to capture a little more return on those acres. If you notice a lot of trampling around waterers or feeders, just make a note that you'll need to deep rip that first chance you get. Of course, if we don't get more rainfall, the soil won't be wet enough to compact!

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

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