Airing December 13 - 19, 2005

Large Round Bale Storage

This is Ag Outlook 2005 on 1420 KJCK, I'm Chuck Otte, Geary County, K-State Research and Extension Ag & Natural Resources Agent. Well, now that we've had that first snow and it's pretty well melted off, maybe we need to re-examine our large round bale storage plan. If most of the snow was melted and you checked out your bales and found lots of piles of snows still lying around, then we need to talk!! Ideally, hay would always be stored under a roof, even an open sided pole type shed with a roof is better than out in the open. So you don't have barn storage and don't think you can afford it? If hay is an important part of your operation, let's sit down and push some numbers sometime - you may find that you can afford it. But we often don't have a choice. So we want to store these bales where any precipitation that falls will flow away fairly rapidly. Often the worst place to store large round bales is in the middle of the field. Designate an area, preferably on a slight slope and get several inches of crushed rock hauled in and leveled around to provide good drainage. Keep in mind that in a 5 foot diameter bale, the outer 4 inches holds roughly 1/3 the volume of the entire bale. It isn't uncommon that between storage losses and feeding losses, ½ of the hay is never consumed by the cattle. So, you've got lots of hay and it's not a problem? Let's push some pencils on that one and show the value of 50% of that hay if you sold it. You probably store bales in long rows. And based on limited research, it looks like east west oriented rows lose slightly less in storage than north south oriented rows. Better yet is stacking in a pyrimid, 3-2-1, but that is more work. And standing one bale on end and a second across the top appears to work pretty good, surprisingly! This has been Ag Outlook 2005 on the Talk of JC, 1420 KJCK, I'm Chuck Otte.

Alfalfa Variety Selection & Roundup Ready Alfalfa

This is Ag Outlook 2005 on 1420 KJCK, I'm Chuck Otte, Geary County, K-State Research and Extension Ag & Natural Resources Agent. I know you're right in between a fall and a spring planting of alfalfa, but a lot of the research results are starting to flood my office now and I want to at least call your attention to these and then we can discuss them further come spring. By the way, next August we are going to have an alfalfa production meeting here in Junction City. It's amazing to me, how many people still just get some alfalfa seed of un-named variety from a neighbor. And maybe that seed will be okay, and maybe it's just what's left and can compete with the grass and weeds or can produce seed when it's too dry to produce enough growth to harvest it for hay. Not a good way to make your selection for a crop you want to keep around for 4 to 6 years. There are a lot of really good alfalfa varieties out there, with some pretty good disease resistance, but you need to pay the extra dollars for certified seed. Sure, it seems pricey, but if you figure out that seed cost on a per ton basis over 4 to 6 years, it's going to be a fairly cheap investment. And now we've got something new hitting the market - roundup ready alfalfa. And from what I've heard, several companies have limited supplies of seed ready to sell. First of all, there's a $2.50 per pound of seed technology cost. Yup, that's going to work out to an extra $25 to $35 per acre to plant roundup ready alfalfa. Spread the cost out over 4 to 6 tons per year for 5 or 6 years. It's only an extra $1 per ton of production cost. But what it might do is make you do a better job of managing your alfalfa. If you have questions, give me a call! This has been Ag Outlook 2005 on the Talk of JC, 1420 KJCK, I'm Chuck Otte.

Christmas Gifts

This is Ag Outlook 2005 on 1420 KJCK, I'm Chuck Otte, Geary County, K-State Research and Extension Ag & Natural Resources Agent. A couple of weeks ago I did a program on Christmas gift ideas for farmers and ranchers. Boy did my wife give me the dickens because everything I talked about was over $100. Okay, so let's go to the other end this morning and talk about some fairly low cost gift ideas that have some real practicality. Two things that I find I can not get along without anymore are resealable bags and cable ties. Get the heavy weight freezer type resealable bags and keep them around the house, shop or garage. I use them for everything under the sun for storing extra batteries when I travel, providing waterproof protection just in case, or simply keeping screws, nuts, bolts or other small parts together. Cable ties are an another god send of an idea. You can buy a plastic jar of several hundred in several different sizes and I can find a thousand and one uses for these things. You can even hook several together for a reall big job. I think I just bought a jar of these for 5 bucks last weekend! As my father got older, but he still enjoyed tinkering in the shop, one thing that I got him that he found very useful was a good magnet on a long handle. A lot of things that he would drop were easily retrieved with a magnet and no bending over. They can even come in handy in the house trying to find those pins in the carpet, paper clips behind the desk and that nail you're trying to hang the picture with that just went behind the sofa! You can even get them in a telescoping model that you can keep in your shirt pocket. Look in hardware stores and auto supply stores for these items. They come in a variety of magnet sizes and types of handles. One last thing - one of those small, LED flashlights that you can pop in your pocket - you're never without a light! This has been Ag Outlook 2005 on the Talk of JC, 1420 KJCK, I'm Chuck Otte.

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