Airing December 19 - 23, 2005

Split fertilizations on Wheat

This is Ag Outlook 2005 on 1420 KJCK, I'm Chuck Otte, Geary County, K-State Research and Extension Ag & Natural Resources Agent. If you had been thinking about getting some December fertilization of wheat OR brome done, I think we can pretty well forget that now!! Which means that ll the rest of your wheat fertilization is now going to have to go on after the first of the year, and in many cases it may be late February or early March. Does this change how much fertilizer you need to apply? A good study was done up at Belleville in recent years looking at different application times of the same rates of fertilizer. This was a multiple year study so I feel it has some very good validity. 40, 80 and 120 pounds of nitrogen was applied all in the fall just pre plant, all in the spring, from mid-February to mid-March, split half and half at those two times and also looked at applying 80 pounds at jointing, 80 pounds at flag leaf emergence and splitting that 80 pounds half at normal spring time and half at those two growth stages I just mentioned. As you can imagine, anything that involved application at or after jointing showed a serious reduction in yield, in fact the application at flag leaf was not significantly greater than no fertilizer at all. Here's the key, fall applications were not significantly different than the same rate applied in February or early March. Even splitting that same rate, half in the fall, half in the spring, was not significantly different. There was a trend towards slightly higher applications with the split or spring apps, but not significant. The bottom line is, that as long as you have the nitrogen down before head size determination, which occurs ahead of jointing, you'll be okay assuming that there was sufficient residual or planting time N.

This has been Ag Outlook 2005 on the Talk of JC, 1420 KJCK, I'm Chuck Otte.

Colder Weather Cow Care

This is Ag Outlook 2005 on 1420 KJCK, I'm Chuck Otte, Geary County, K-State Research and Extension Ag & Natural Resources Agent. Okay, this northerner is willing to admit it, we've had some cold weather this month. Certainly not record cold, but cold enough that we need to be thinking about those cows. Additionally, many cow herds are getting close to that final period of gestation when the nutritional needs of that cow and developing calf start to really take off. Once we start getting daily average temperatures below about 30 degrees (that means take the average of the daily high and the daily low) we probably need to start giving them a little extra food. Fortunately these cold spells haven't been terribly cold, and most cow herds I've seen around the county have been getting a little extra hay, so we're doing good there. Additionally the spells haven't been overly lengthy, which can sure happen this time of year, so it hasn't taken a big toll on cows if they haven't been supplemented. But we need to remember the changing needs for those spring, or late winter, calving cows and supplementation is going to become real important over the next couple of months. A rule of thumb for late gestation cows - for every degree below 30 that the average temperature drops, energy needs for that cow go up about 1%. Here's the other kicker to that equation - water. The cows still need plenty of access to water and the warmer you can keep it, the better. You know how much water a cow drinks, now think about warming that water from 40 degrees to a cow's body temperature - how much energy will that take! Which helps explain the need for more energy in their ration as the mercury starts to drop.

This has been Ag Outlook 2005 on the Talk of JC, 1420 KJCK, I'm Chuck Otte.

This is Ag Outlook 2005 on 1420 KJCK, I'm Chuck Otte, Geary County, K-State Research and Extension Ag & Natural Resources Agent. We've already had some fairly cold temperatures this winter and it may be bringing up the question of how cold does it have to get before we start to grow concerned about wheat? Winterkill is always a concern with our winter wheat crop - and perhaps even more so with the newer high yielding, much earlier varieties. Two things determine how much, if any winter kill occurs. How well was the wheat hardened off and then how cold did the soil get at crown level. For the first part of the question, hardening off of the plant for winter, keep in mind that we had an unusually warm November so wheat was still actively growing up till early December. But, the good news is also that much of our wheat had fairly good growth on it and that extra cover will provide good protection against cold weather. Under normal conditions, the colder weather slowly settles the wheat into winter dormancy and we are at that point when we would expect wheat to be at it's maximum winter hardiness. The next question is how cold did it get in the soil at the crown level? We did see temperatures down below zero earlier in the month. BUT, we've had snow cover for both of these cold snaps and that helps moderate soil temperatures a lot! Basically, air temperatures of -10 with no snow cover and dry soil will cause winter kill. Smaller plants first and then larger ones. If plants are winterkilled, we may not know until spring. If they are killed, obviously they won't green up. If they are damaged, they'll start to green up and then possibly go backwards. So far, we're sitting really good. But there's still a lot of winter weather left before spring! This has been Ag Outlook 2005 on the Talk of JC, 1420 KJCK, I'm Chuck Otte.

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