Air October 27, 2004

Thank you Jerry, and good morning everyone.

What a beautiful rain! What a million dollar rain, as the old saying goes. All that wheat that was struggling to come up is now exploding out of the ground as we speak, as is the grass seed I over seeded weeks ago in my yard. When I woke up early yesterday morning and heard that rain on the roof it was certainly music to my ears!! One thing to keep in mind is that with the warmer than usual weather we've been having, we could certainly be seeing aphids or greenbugs developing in the wheat this fall. We normally don't need to spray these, in fact maybe all these stupid ladybugs will fly back out to the fields and eat them, but sometimes treatment of wheat in the fall for aphids does have to happen.

A few folks have been asking about about potential risks from grazing the corn or milo stalks this fall. Naturally, what most folks are concerned with is nitrates and/or prussic acid. Both can be a risk, usually more so with sorghum stover than corn. Any crop has the potential to have high nitrates. Weeds, grasses, crops, nothing is immune. Sorghums are more prone to the problems than corn. The problem is usually greatest during adverse weather, especially drought early in the season. We did test some milo earlier this fall and were getting very low readings back. We would expect this given the great growing weather early. The late season dry weather was long after the plants had allocated the nitrogen to places they were supposed to go. I would not worry about nitrates in standing stover. Prussic Acid, also known as hydrogen cyanide, is another story. It can be found in the sorghums, but not corn. Even under excellent growing conditions sorghum can have high prussic acid, but it is usually found in young tender new shoots. But as the new shoots grow and get size, the prussic acid usually dissipates. Unlike nitrates, where once they are in a plant they don't readily go away, prussic acid is quite volatile. Harvest the forage and within a few days or weeks the prussic acid has volatilized away. So after you harvest the milo don't be in a hurry to turn cattle out. We often get those new shoots at the base which the cattle will go after that can be high in prussic acid. Wait to graze the milo stalks until a couple weeks after a hard hard freeze and then you shouldn't have any problems!

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

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