Tom

For a number of farms, the forage supplies this year may be very tight.  First the lack of rain, and then too much rain to late.  The last newsletter covered what we can do this fall for an emergency forage crop.  There is one crop you can plant this fall that can give you high yields of very high-quality forage earlier in the spring than any other crop – winter forage.  Winter grains, specifically winter triticale, have been increasing acreage at a tremendous rate for the past 12 years as more farmers put their money there because the crop makes money.  A bonus is that the very high digestible winter forage, when added to the ration as summer heat comes on, eliminates the formerly common “summer slump”.

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The dry weather has produced spotty crops.  One area will have rain and decent crops while just a mile away the crop is struggling from the lack of water.  What we have seen is that regardless of weather, farms that rotate frequently, and build their soils structure and organic matter with intensively managed winter forage, their crops are doing much better despite the conditions

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Corn is in, or not.  The weather has been in a wild swing cycle that we have seen before.  No, burning an agronomist at the stake will not help! With any shifting weather patterns, not putting all your eggs in one basket (or one crop) could give you a much more stable forage supply.   One of those alternative crops is the often-ignored Brown Mid Rib forage sorghum or sorghum-Sudan.  It is planted when the soil is warmer than 60F and the forecast is for warmer conditions.  This occurs after most if not all haylage is harvested.  Taking first cutting followed by sorghum is one way to increase the yield from a runout hayfield.

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In the north-central and northeast half of the US, the season is shaping up more and more as one of the springs where we go from winter to summer in less than a week.  Snow one day, short sleeve shirts two days later.  The longer-term forecast just a week ago had this region as colder and wetter than normal. The forecast has now been changed to hot and dry.   The supreme irony is that by the middle of May we will probably be at average growing degree days. This will mean that the manure that couldn’t get spread because it was too wet, the corn that couldn’t get planted because it was too cold and wet, and the winter forage and haylage that was growing very slowly, will all switch to “need to be done now!”

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This is a difficult newsletter to write with so many factors affecting the farm in play.   It is even more difficult with your farm business on the line.  We have been through both low and high milk prices and high grain prices times before.   Farms survived then and will now but not without some change.  An old farmer is saying that “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.”

If you are not there, one of the key steps is to maximize the milk produced by the least expensive feeds.   In short, you want more money for your efforts which is not the same as more milk.

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Most farms growing winter triticale forage with the high yield management package, are getting yields above what they expected yet the protein is less than what they want.  With the high soy meal prices, the lack of forage protein hurts.  Reality has caught up with them.  As we pointed out last year in the March 2021 newsletter; a three-ton winter forage dry matter yield will remove 192 lbs. of Nitrogen at 20% crude protein.   Insufficient nitrogen (and sulfur) will not only limit the protein of the crop but also drain the soil of available nitrogen so when corn is planted after, it does poorly for the first couple of weeks.  A band aid answer is to put some popup nitrogen fertilizer in with the corn seed.  The better answer is to put enough on the winter triticale and any not used will be there to supply the corn.

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With the price/supply squeeze coming tighter during spring fertilizer purchases, farmers are looking for options that will still support high yields. The November newsletter touched on soil testing to see what is needed in your soil, not what you guess it needs.  It has been clear from looking at soil samples over the past 40 years, that fields with regular manure applications are testing high to very high in phosphorous.   This is especially true for fields that are daily spread or spread without immediate incorporation.  The nitrogen fractions volatilize and are lost while the phosphorous mostly remains.  Thus, more manure is applied to meet the nitrogen needs of the corn and so excess phosphorus, above and beyond the maximum needs of the crop, accumulates.   The high to very high soil test in phosphorous means that the odds of getting an economic return on starter phosphorous is nearly 0.

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In 2020 I discussed an experiment we conducted for winter-killed alfalfa.  The original concept was as soon as you determined the stand was dead or nearly dead you could no-till red clover or red clover and oats to re-establish a forage legume for the next three years.  Alfalfa allelopathy had no effect on either crop.

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The November (click to open) newsletter addressed the first steps you need to take to deal with, and relieve some of the pressure from the high fertilizer prices.  This letter will key in on a change that livestock farms, especially those that produce a lot of manure, can make to reduce or completely offset the fertilizer while supporting high crop yields.

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The high cost of fertilizer has farms in sticker shock and wondering how they were going to get crops fertilized for yield next spring.  There are several steps that you can take to help this situation tremendously.  We will discuss the first two in this letter, more next time.

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