Forage Strategies

The bermudagrass we cut yesterday was pretty good in spots, and should yield out a fair amount. We already have more hay rolled than we did last summer, and will be adding yesterday's cutting to that number (and will probably have another cutting in late Sept. on approx. 35 acres). Despite the increase, we've still have several plans and options for feeding our herd from now through next summer:

• As of today we'll start feeding our milking herd lupin baleage. We have enough to last about 35 days, by which time we should have a good idea about whether or not lupin is a crop we should continue to grow.
• After we feed all of the lupin, we'll be going back to ryegrass baleage and then our wheat/oak baleage. We should have enough total baleage to get us well into the fall.
• Our 20 acres of BMR sudex and 55 acres of forage sorghum will be ready to harvest in September. Originally we planned on making baleage out of the sudex and chopping the sorghum, but I think we're going to go ahead and chop both crops and pack it into a silage pit.
  
• We have roughly 80 acres of cropland we haven't planted this summer that we'll use for our cool season forages. We will have to clip and/or spray the weeds and crabgrass prior to planting those crops in the next couple of months. We'll probably try to harvest some of the crabgrass as baleage. Its quality will be a factor in deciding whether to feed it to the milking herd or to heifers/dry cows.
  
• We will probably once again try to buy peanut hay, assuming the economics work out. It would allow us to extend the availability of our sorghum silage and reserve more of our bermudagrass hay for our heifers and dry cows.
• The cool season crops we intend on planting include ryegrass, oats, and triticale, with possibly some wheat and lupin. We'll use these for both grazing and for harvested forages (either baleage or chopped silage in the spring). Grazing these crops will let us extend our summer/fall-harvested forages later into the spring, and the baleage or silage we harvest from them will be our forage basis through next summer.
  

Long day behind, Long day ahead

I wrapped 135 bales yesterday between 1-8 pm after trying (and failing) to adjust our wrapper to work with a faster tractor all morning. I've got about 75 bales waiting on me this morning with probably another 100 yet to be baled. At best, I can do 30 an hour, but I'm afraid it will be a slow process getting the bales to the spot I'm wrapping and dumping them. With so much left to do, it makes sense that it's supposed to rain alot today. And, of course, the Ford 6600 I'll be running the wrapper with doesn't have a cab or canopy.

Rough ride

The field I started working in yesterday is very rough and full of rocks. I had to replace 8 of 14 mower blades and turn another 3 over before I stopped yesterday evening. I've also got a sore back and neck this morning, with at least another 3 hours worth of cutting to go. We're also going to have to push harder to get it raked, baled, and wrapped since the weatherman is now giving a good chance of rain for Thursday. One thing's for sure, though...there's enough forage out there to be well worth the aggravation!

Back to the Field

We wound up with 122 wrapped bales of ryegrass last week, putting us at about 350 total wrapped bales of ryegrass and lupin/wheat. As soon as I can choke down some lunch I'll be back out in the field. We've got about 30 acres of a wheat/oat mix and 3 acres of ryegrass left to do.

Good Yield

We're estimating that our lupin/wheat combo yielded out nearly 6 tons per acre at 60-65% moisture. That's pretty good, especially since we didn't ever have to fertilize it!

Cuttin' time

I spent the last half of yesterday afternoon cutting our 10 acres of lupin. We'll aim to bale it at 65-70% moisture, and the cool weather we'll have today and tomorrow may mean that it won't be ready until Wednesday. In the meantime, I'll cut a small patch of ryegrass today. The rest of our ryegrass, as well as our wheat and oats, probably won't be ready to cut for at least a couple of weeks.

Spring Forages

We took a closer look at all of our spring forages this week and have a pretty good idea of when we'll be harvesting them. First up will be the 10 acres of lupin and wheat we have planted, as well as one 8 acre field of Marshall ryegrass. If the weather permits, I think we'll be harvesting these two spots next week. We'll use a cutter/conditioner and drop it into a row, let it sit a day or two, and then green bale it and wrap each bale in silage plastic.

Spreading Slurry

I finally pumped some stored up agri-byproduct out of the SlurryStore and field applied it to some wheat and oats. In about three hours time, I made 11 trips with the honeywagon and spread probably around 36,000 gallons. I've gotten just over half the field across from the farm covered, and hope to get it finished up this afternoon. Being able to spread the slurry has allowed me to cut back on the amount of N-sol (32-0-0) needed to adequately fertilize it.

A rainy Friday

The first thunderstorm moved through this morning a little after 4:00 am, and we've had a couple of passing showers since then. It looks like the rain will continue to be off-and-on throughout the morning, and hopefully by lunch we will have gotten around an inch. We'll probably find some "indoor" work to do this morning in the milking barn or in the shop.

The generally mild afternoons we've had this past month has really helped our wheat, oats, and ryegrass to thicken up. In fact, we could probably graze a couple of the fields in mid-January if we get a warm, dry period of about ten days.

The cows have been milking really well, and the bulk tanks have been showing about a 62 pounds per day average. We're almost out of baleage and will be replacing it with corn silage next week. Hopefully the cows will be able to transition quickly and keep their production up.

It's been awhile

Sorry for the hiatus from posting to the blog over the last couple of weeks. I've been pretty much swamped with things I needed to do, and there's really not been much of consequence to report from our farm.

We've gotten a little more rain over the last couple of days, and that'll help our our winter crop. We've still got thirty acres of wheat and oats to plant (as well as about 15-20 acres to overseed with ryegrass), but some of what we've already planted is really starting to shoot up out of the ground. The rest shouldn't be too far behind. Now that all the bermudagrass has gone dormant and turned brown, it'll be nice to look out over some green patches again.

Feed costs continue to climb higher and higher thanks in part to both commodity prices and freight. We got a good deal on some peanut hay from a farmer in a neighboring county, and we're hoping our nutritionalist will come up with a ration that will let us use less alfalfa without sacrificing too much production.

Speaking of production, we're up to 203 cows milking right now and on average they're each giving 55 pounds a day. They could be doing a little more if we fed them just a little more, but with that many cows we don't have enough trough space to increase their feed.

Well, it's time for breakfast and then back to work.

Time to plant

Last week was wonderful...it was cool and wet and I loved every minute of it. The clouds have now given way to the sunshine, and it's finally time to plant our cool season crops. I'll start drilling in ryegrass seed this afternoon, and hopefully by the end of the week we will have been able to start preparing our fields for oats and wheat.

We dried off eight cows today and had one heifer freshen, so we'll have 191 cows going through the parlor this afternoon. Right now, their daily TMR consists of a concentrated dairy feed meal, cottonseeds, cottonseed hulls, alfalfa, ryegrass/oat hay, and bermudagrass hay.

The week ahead

I don't think we'll run out of things to do this coming week. If all goes as planned (though it seldom does):

• We should finish chopping our corn this afternoon. That means spending time tomorrow covering our silage pit. If not, we'll be busy fixing another breakdown.
  
• We're due to weigh milk this week, if we can get our schedule coordinated with the tester.
• We need to rebuild a few fences, especially one around the pond in our milk cow pasture.
• A pretty fair stand of signalgrass has come up in our wheat fields, and would make good hay. We'll work towards cutting and baling it if they knock back the rain chances (we'll gladly take the rain, though).
• Speaking of wheat, Dad and I will start deciding how many acres of wheat, oats, and ryegrass we'll need to plant in a few weeks, as well as the fertilizer and tillage requirements.
  
• I need to spray some herbicide in a few places and kill weeds.
  
• Nights this week will also be busy, as we've got a service at our church tonight, our county's Farmers Federation's annual meeting Tuesday night, we'll go watch our beloved Mississippi State Bulldogs take their annual beating from LSU on Thursday, and then Friday I believe our hometown high school will open their football season at home.