Harvest Update, 8/10/20

After getting off to a slow and stuttering start last week, today was the first really successful day of this year's corn silage harvest. All told, I covered ten acres in six hours and sent out 21 loads of silage. I'm happy with the yield, though the moisture content was a little low in some parts of the field. The recent hot and dry weather has started to take a toll on the more mature corn, but if I can keep my chopper in good working order I should be able to get it harvested before it dries down too far. Still, I'm keeping my fingers crosses for an evening rain shower to help it hold on a little longer.

As it stands, we have 21 acres worth of "hill ground" corn in the silage pit with roughly 52 more acres to go. Here are a couple of photos and a video from today's harvest.

Ryegrass harvest

It's been a busy two weeks, but we're nearly finished with our ryegrass harvest for this year. Our yields have been comparable to last year, and we should have enough harvested to make it our milking herd's primary forage from June until possibly as late as early October. Up to this point we have cut and chopped just over 75 acres with 12-15 more to go. Depending on the weather, we may pass on chopping a few of those acres in favor of rolling a few bales of dry ryegrass hay.

We will follow our ryegrass with a BMR forage sorghum variety just as we did last year, but we won't be planting that crop for at least a month. Next up on our "farming" agenda is planting our silage corn, which we tried to do two weeks ago but got rained out. That was probably a blessing considering we've had barely a sprinkle since then. If all goes perfectly (which, of course, it never does) we'll have our corn planted by the end of next week, spend the next vaccinating heifers and doing some pasture maintenance, followed by our first cutting of bermudagrass hay.

Here are a few photos from our ryegrass harvest, followed by my latest MooTube Minute video update:

We mow the ryegrass with a hay conditioner, which leaves the cut grass in a windrow.

Our silage chopper (forage harvester) is a bit of a hybrid. The chopper itself is a John Deere,
but the forage head is a Gehl model my father modified to attach to the Deere.

Once the forage wagon is full, it dumps over into the truck.
The truck then hauls the ryegrass to the silage pit/bunker where it is packed.

Harvest is finished, but there ain't no slowing down!

We can finally close the book on this year's silage harvest! What started six and a half weeks ago ended Thursday with 165 acres of corn, forage sorghum, and sudex chopped, packed, and sealed into our three silage pits.  I'm estimating that we harvested roughly 1400 tons of silage (it's hard to be sure w/o truck scales), which should be enough to feed our milking herd through mid-to-late spring. 

dumping a load of chopped sudex

The corn in our first pit has now been sealed long enough to fully ensile, and I expect we'll begin feeding it late next week. We'll be getting a new grain mix formula from the feed mill based on the silage's forage analysis, and will add other home-grown forage in with it to make a total-mixed ration (TMR). We have about two weeks worth of spring oat baleage we'll use up first before switching to sudex baleage we harvested a few weeks ago.  We're also going to look into using cotton hulls as a fiber source in the ration so as to preserve our bermudagrass hay for heifers and dry cows.

As the feed quality improves over the next few weeks, so to should our milk production. The cooler evenings and opportunities for supplemental morning grazing will also help in that regard. We are currently up to 182 cows in milk and are on pace to climb back over the 200 mark sometime before the end of the year. In other news, we AI'ed (artificially inseminated) 9 cows this week, the first we had bred since early summer.

This coming week is going to be crazy busy. In addition to the everyday dairy chores, we're going to be cleaning and putting away our harvesting equipment, applying slurry with our honeywagon, and possibly harvesting some rank pasture grass as "get-by-in-case-of-a-long-winter" hay.  On top of that, some folks from our dairy checkoff will be on the farm Tuesday morning to get video footage for part of the "Dedicated to Dairy" campaign, I have a meeting at the Alabama Farmers Federation's Montgomery office on Wednesday, and then I'll be on Mississippi State's campus on Maroon Friday to give a presentation to the Ag Econ's faculty and grad students (Hail State!).

I hope y'all have a "dairy" good week!

Caught up, milk's up, and back to harvesting

We took a break from harvesting silage last week to catch up on some other jobs around the dairy farm. Although Monday was pretty much a washout thanks to Tropical Storm Lee and its nearly 7" of rain (much needed, by the way), we did fit in a lot of work Tuesday through Friday. We spent some time moving several animals around into other pastures, fertilized a couple of fields with slurry, and performed maintenance on our harvesting equipment.

GDF #636 "Adele" shades on a sunny September day

The best thing about the past week is the upswing in our cows' milk production. On average, the cows are producing five pound of milk more than they were at the beginning of last week. Cooler nights, not-quite-as-hot days, and a change in their feed formulation are the primary reasons the cows are doing better. We are also benefiting from having more "fresh" cows in the milking herd. A fresh cow is one that has recently calved and is increasing its milk production.

We resumed our harvest yesterday with 90 acres of forage sorghum ready to be chopped. If all goes well (and it rarely does with our chopper), I would hope we could harvest 10 acres per day. I managed 5 acres Monday afternoon, so we shall see. Unlike our corn which was planted mostly in straight rows on flat land, all of our sorghum was planted in contoured, terraced fields. This means that we'll have to run a little slower and will have more in-field turning. These fields are closer to our silage pits, though, so there should be minimal downtime waiting on the dump truck to travel back and forth.

Remember, you can keep up to date with what's happening by "liking" our Facebook page or by following me on Twitter!

Photo Friday: Recapping Spring Harvest 2011

We started harvesting our cool-season forages the second week of April. Now that we're finally finished, I thought I would give you a pictorial recap of what we've been doing over the past few weeks.

We harvested four varieties of cool-season forages this spring: rye, ryegrass, oats, and triticale (pictured).

During the first few days, we would mow down the crops in the late afternoon/early evening before chopping the following day.

 They say old equipment is the best equipment. I don't know about that, but at least our old equipment has long since been paid for. Our old John Deere forage harvester and its modified Gehl pick-up reel allowed us to chop over 70 acres of forage into silage.

 The chopped forage was dumped into our silage pits where most of it was packed and covered. A couple of dump truck loads were fed to the milking herd each day as greenchop.

We made it through the harvest with only one significant breakdown, though we had to adjust/repair/replace several chains on the chopper throughout the process. 

 

In addition to chopping the forage, we also harvested several acres of it as baleage.

Once we had finished harvesting the "good stuff" we planted in the Fall, we turned our attention to our hayfields where quite a bit of "volunteer" ryegrass has sprouted.  We mowed and dry baled it so the bermudagrass could start growing like it needed to.

With harvest completed, it was time to clean the equipment and park it under the sheds until we need it again.

In the hayfield

Now that we have finished harvesting all of the cool-season forage crops we planted back in the fall, it's time to remove the volunteer ryegrass that sprouted this spring in our bermudagrass hayfields. I started mowing the the fields on Friday, and I expect we will have covered all 60 acres by mid-afternoon.  We'll hook up the rake and baler tomorrow morning and should be able to roll up a third of it before trying to knock out the rest on Thursday and Friday.

We're really not expecting a big yield or high nutritional quality out of the ryegrass, but it has to come off before we can fertilize our bermudagrass. If all goes well, we'll get the bales hauled out quickly and have fertilizer spread next week. Depending on the weather, we'll hopefully be looking at harvesting good bermudagrass hay in mid-to-late June.

Bad Monday, Better Tuesday (so far)

Monday wasn't the best day for our farm, at least as far as the spring forage harvest is concerned.  We were able to chop, haul, and pack 16 loads of oat silage yesterday with no problems save a couple of minor chain issues and a flat tire on the dump truck.  But then, with several acres of oats on the ground ready to be harvested, the chopper's day was ended when a universal-joint cross broke on the drive shaft.

We hitched up the hay baler and bale wrapper a couple of hours later to finish the day's job.  Dad and I were making pretty good progress when one of the baler's roller chains broke after 29 bales.  We didn't have the parts we needed in our shop to fix it, so we parked the equipment for the night with 3-4 acres of oats still on the ground.  

Things started to improve for us this morning, though. The rain we were expecting this morning never fell, so Dad repaired the baler and sent one of our employees back to finish the job.   Meanwhile, a Select Sires rep came to the dairy to evaluate nearly 50 of our young cows for their Select Mating Service.  He told us this was one of the best groups top-to-bottom that we've had and we should expect big things from them over the next few years.

So here we sit at lunchtime on Tuesday feeling pretty good about the day.  The cows are getting their last hour of grazing in and I'm about to head to the field and wrap the 40+ bales that were rolled up this morning.  Milking will start up around 1pm and should be about finished by the time the next predicted rain gets here mid-afternoon. The weather could get pretty rough over the next 36 hours, but hopefully we'll get through it without any damage.  And with over 30 acres still left to harvest, we'll be keeping our fingers crossed that the coming storms don't keep us out of the field for several days like last week's storms did.

Forage Thinking

My dad and I made a quick swing around the farm yesterday to check the progress of our various spring forages.  The result: time to get the harvesting equipment ready.  It would be ideal if we could start the harvest this week, but that's unlikely to happen.  We already have our monthly DHIA test scheduled for tomorrow morning, and our local large-animal veterinarian is coming by the farm tomorrow to pregnancy check 80-100 cows and heifers. With all that going on, it would be nearly impossible to get our chopping equipment in the field this week, but we hope to be hard at it by this time next week.

Our 20+ acres of rye will be the first crop to harvest.  And even though we won't be able to harvest any this week as silage, we may be able to go ahead and harvest about half of it as baleage.  That would involve mowing it down with our cutter/conditioner and then baling it green and plastic wrapping it the next day.  Once we finish with the rye, we will move on to about 6 acres of triticale and just over 40 acres of oats. Our cows recently grazed a 10 acre field that was split between those two crops, and hopefully it will have enough re-growth to cut and chop by the time we finish harvesting the other fields.

Beyond the harvest, the cows are continuing to strip graze rye and ryegrass and should be able to continue doing so for several more weeks.  We've made it through the winter with a fair amount of bermudagrass hay to spare, so we'll probably use a lot of it in the cows' TMR feed over the next couple of months (though we'll likely carry a number of bales over into next season in case we don't produce enough new hay this summer).  We will probably plant our corn silage crop in the Yellow Creek bottom towards the end of this month or the first of May. We expect to follow our spring forages with a BMR variety of forage sorghum, which we'll plant in late May or early June.  Sudex for grazing/baleage and teff grass for grazing/hay are other crop options we are also considering for this summer.

What's been happening...from harvesting to invasions to football

Things have been busy, busy, busy lately, and when I've had time to blog I've been too worn out to do so. But, the coffee's flowing this morning and it's a few more minutes before I'll be throwing my bacon in the frying pan, so sit back as I give you a quick recap of what's been happening 'round here.

I was in Chicago on Monday and Tuesday of last week for the first ever AgChat Training Conference. I was a co-presenter with Tim Zweber and Patty Leonard in a workshop entitled "Real Life Show & Tell" in which we each talked about some of the things we do (both online and "offline") to promote our farms and industry.

Last Wednesday we began harvesting our bottomland corn. We made pretty good progress through the week, and the only major issue we had was with a flat tire on the dump truck. We weren't the only ones harvesting, though, as fall armyworms invaded the farm and ate up 52 acres worth of hayfield regrowth. We could have sprayed them, but decided it wasn't worth the time or expense considering we hadn't yet fertilized the fields.

Instead of keeping up the momentum and continuing the harvest on Saturday like many farmers would do, we opted to park the tractors so we could go enjoy the opening of football season at Mississippi State. Dad and I took care of the morning milking duties and left the afternoon in the hands of our employees. We enjoyed over 6 hours of tailgating with other family members and friends before moving into the stadium for the 'Dawgs 49-7 romp over Memphis.

Sunday was a Sunday. Milk, feed, church, milk, feed, done.

Things got interesting on Labor Day. While everyone else has been harvesting, I've been taking care of all the other chores around the dairy. By the end of the day, I had two cows and two heifers to calve, I had to throw lots of refused feed out of the cows' trough (front-end of the silage pit stuff...not the best quality), and a cow stepped on my big toe and slammed me against the rails of our catch-pen when I tried to load her into our breeding chute. And to add insult to injury, I returned home to learn that my baby daughter had hidden the remote control for the satellite!

Tuesday was much better. Harvest continued to run smoothly, dairy chores were much easier, and my wife found the remote.

Things slowed down a bit yesterday. We should have finished harvesting, but our dump truck's transmission got stuck in 5th gear on just the second load. We had to tow it back to the shop (loaded, of course), and after attempts to locate a truck-for-hire failed we managed to get it to where it would shift between 2nd and 3rd. They limped along and managed to finish the day with 11 of the approximately 15 loads that remained in the field.

So that brings us to today. Morning milking is obviously already over, and we'll soon be getting back to work. We have to catch one of the heifers that calved Monday, as she decided to break out of the milking herd's pasture and return to where she came from. After that, hopefully dad and the others can get the harvesting finished before lunch while I take care of feeding heifers and doing whatever else needs doing. With any luck, dad and I will leave things with the employees early this afternoon so we can get a jump on ballgame traffic. That's right, BIG game in Starkville tonight...Mississippi State vs. Auburn. Go 'Dawgs!

A couple of links for your reading pleasure:

• An article from the AgriBank Advocate newsletter about our farm's use of social media.
• A blog I posted to Farm Bureau's FBlog last night about the most memorable question I've ever been asked about a cow.

Y'all have a "dairy" good day!

Corn silage harvest is underway

We started harvesting our "early" corn for silage yesterday, chopping about 8 of the roughly 75 acres we intend on harvesting over the next few days. July has been very hot and dry, and as a result our corn started drying up faster than what we had hoped for. The yield and quality look to be adequate after one day of cutting, but I can't help but wonder "what might have been" if the weather had been more favorable over the last few weeks.

And though it may be too late to help our early corn, the good soaking rain that finally fell last night will really help out our "late" corn in Yellow Creek Bottom. It hasn't tasseled yet, so it still has the potential to grow a little more. Our pastures and hay fields will certainly benefit from the moisture as well, and the latter should be ready to harvest for the second time as soon as we finish chopping silage.

Our cows have backed off on their milk production but are still performing better than what they typically do this time of year. Our milking herd is down to 196 cows, and I don't expect that we'll make it back to 200 for at least a month. We'll be weighing and sampling our cows' milk tomorrow morning.

Finally, I had the pleasure of having an old high school classmate stop by with his family for a quick visit yesterday (I strongly encourage you to check out Zac's blog). His daughter really seemed to enjoy the cows and calves, but the best part for me was that I got to do a little educating when he and his wife asked questions about organic milk, hormones, and antibiotics. It just goes to show that there's always an opportunity to share your story and help others understand what you do.

2010 Spring Harvest is underway!

Yesterday afternoon I fired up the old cutter/conditioner and started laying down our forage rye. We'll run it through the silage chopper this morning and, if the equipment seems to be working like it should, cut more to chop tomorrow. I'll post more about it as we go through the harvest, but in the meantime you can learn more by watching our latest GDF MooTube Minute:

The calm before the storm

It's a beautiful morning here on the farm! The birds are singing, heifers are lazily grazing away in their pastures, and the sunlight is making the dew on our rye fields sparkle. All is peaceful, all is calm.

But not for much longer!

We'll spend much of today furiously preparing to plant corn...servicing tractors, calibrating equipment, and even making a supply run to Columbus. If all goes well, we'll start late this afternoon the really "hammer down" on Tuesday and Wednesday. We have 80 acres of corn to plant, and planting it four rows at a time will probably take a little better than two days.

But planting corn is only part of what we intend to do this week. While some of us are in the cornfield, the rest of us will be preparing our harvesting equipment. The plan is to begin cutting rye on Wednesday so we can begin chopping it for silage on Thursday. And, of course, we'll have to take the time to milk the cows and feed all the animals each day.

So here's hoping for clear weather and no mechanical problems over the next several days!