Recent content by fargus

There is a fella over here that pulls an aerway while running a spinner spreader on the 3-point hitch of the tractor. Just enough disturbance to get better germination, especially of the bigger, fluffier seeds. I don't have any pictures of it, but he does quite a bit of work with it every...

That sounds more like it! I remember using sorghum sudan that was 8-10' tall, we turned 30 pairs in on 10 acres of the stuff in August. Kept them busy for the whole month, and not much else was growing during that time. If you are grazing the oats, does it matter if it lodges? Just curious...

You doing the yield estimate by tons, or by grazing days per acre? I'm surprised winter rye is hard to find up there, we have no shortage of it here, but lots of people grow it as a rotation with tobacco in the sand belts. How much N did the oats get? We've had really good luck planting the...

Green chop was kind of what I was thinking. Get it hauled in right to the pasture, dump it on the ground and let 'em at it. Stretch the pasture, bring in some free fertility and feed. It would be great if you could store it, but absent that you could stockpile pastures, or cut more hay...

We grazed stock-piled fescue and trefoil through the snow until the end of January up here last winter. The cows learn pretty quick, as long as they snow doesn't get an ice crust on it, they will find it. If they're too lazy to do that, they ain't staying here! Those pastures look good, you...

You will have a hard time making dry hay. No issues getting a cut of green feed off in 6-8 weeks, but you will need to handle it as baleage or silage somehow. We don't get the drying weather this late in the year to make dry oat hay viable in the fall.

I didn't even touch that. Equipment and labour costs can be highly variable from operation to operation. We only put up 3-400 rolls a year, so we run old equipment that has long been paid for, and I would suggest my maintenance costs aren't tremendously higher than guys running newer equipment...

I'll comment as a cow guy and the fertilizer salesman, seeing as I do both. When hay was cheap (3 cents/lb) and so was fertilizer, I'd have said you could probably do either, and be fine. When hay was still cheap, but fertilizer was climbing, skip the fertilizer and buy your neighbour's hay...

We used an old running gear from under a bale wagon, shortened the reach up as much as we could, put two sleeper beams on the frame and mounted an old 500 gal fuel tank with a box float in the top. Took the core out of an old water heater, put it between the sleepers at the rear and ran a 1...

I hear ya Steve! The last time we fed corn silage to cows it was because feed prices had hit rock bottom and a neighbour had a 2 year old pile he sold us really cheap. Cows were pretty slick the following spring. I was asleep at the wheel in the fall, if I'd been paying attention I could have...

I hear ya! We left 'em in there long enough that they ate the majority of those stems too, only left about 10% behind. I let the cows tell me if the feed is good enough, and they came out in good shape, and rebred while eating it. Just trying to get the same amount of feed for fewer dollars...

Steve, what soil type is it? If it's wetter ground Sorghum-Sudan is the way to go, on light sand you might want to check on some of the millets. 50 lbs/acre sounds like a lot, most guys here are sowing 20-25 lbs, if you're no-tilling I might bump it to 30-35. We've done the same thing, but...

Hey there. We custom graze yearlings on the gain, but if we are looking at grazing pairs we need to charge on a per head/day basis. Just wondering what the going rate is around the country. I have a pretty good idea what it needs to be here, but I'd like to see what everyone thinks before I...

We've had close to a dozen frosts now. Still on stockpiled cool season grasses, should be good until about Christmas. Went on a big tour yesterday, there aren't a lot of cattle still out, and most are being fed now up here.

IF you were to do it in the fall, I would rather see it happen in September. Graze your pasture REALLY short, chase the cows out and no-till immediately. Try and get it to germinate in the fall, and as long as you get past 3ish trifoliates it will make it through the winter and have a good...