Grass woes

[Bigfoot]

My pasture and hay both look terrible. Plenty of rain, and almost no sunshine. Kids mowed the yard today for the first time in 3 weeks. It wasn't exactly hurting to be mowed. My cool season hay is going to seed shin high, and I really throwed the fertilizer at it. Crabgrass peeped the surface on April 6th. Still looks exactly like it did over 3 weeks ago.

I'm thinking get this hay off as quickly as weather agrees, hammer it with some N, and hope for brighter days.

Anybody elses spring off to a terrible start?

 

[Fire Sweep Ranch]

YES! Too cold for fescue to grow. We are WAY behind on grass growth....

 

[Bigfoot]

YES! Too cold for fescue to grow. We are WAY behind on grass growth....

The sun literally has not shined here. My fear is we will step from this to heat so bad fescue shuts down. I have never seen pasture as bad as mine, and they will not eat hay. Just keep munching the green off close to the ground. I'm contemplating a solar fence system, and putting the somewhere as a sacrafice area. Feeding hay, and supplementing that with DDG. Something gotta give here. They have run of the whole place, and the whole place is eat off at the ground.

 

[kentuckyguy]

I’m in the exact same boat. Pasture and hay fields look awful. Hay fields have already started seeding out at 8-10” tall.

I am doing a good job of raising buttercups this spring though lol Ran the finish mower over several acres of them this evening after work. If things don’t improve I’ll have to sell some cattle.

In hind sight I should have put the cattle in a small paddock and made them eat the hay.

 

[kenny thomas]

Same way here. I turned out first week of April. Rotate every 2 days. It should be way ahead of them by now but not happening.

 

[BFE]

A week ago we were too dry for April. Every rain for three weeks missed us. Sowed Balansa the last of March, very little came up, hopefully it will show up eventually. Cool and dry is what set our fescue back, believe it or not. Had around 4" rain since late last week and getting some warmer temps, hoping the fescue will pop this week, I moved some pairs to fresh grass today. Got one more group to move, but with new calves it's hard to get them caught. Next year I'll have them moved to where I won't have to trailer them until the calves are bigger.

 

[SmokinM]

Hay here is pretty short. Been cool and dry for first part of spring finally getting some rain but still to cool to really make stuff happen. Got some orchard grass that looks decent but I had tried to thicken the stand up with oats and they are way behind it so not sure what to do there. Oddly enough my pastures look really good. I am pretty lightly stocked but for some reason grass seems to be growing better in my pastures than my hayfields. Aside from the grass this has been the prettiest spring weather wise I can remember.

 

[1982vett]

Quite the opposite here... Rainfall hasn’t exactly been plentiful since last May but has been timely for the most part. I Hit the exit trigger on 20% of the cows when they hit 70 cents back in March getting ready for a long, hot dry summer. Had contemplated putting fertilizer out but if I was getting ready for a drought then why fertilize? So I didn’t. Now I’m cutting and baling pasture because I can’t watch it go to waste. Waste not want not.... Hay looks and is making pretty good for what it is and cows being on it till the last couple weeks.

Got grass out the wazoo.

 

[callmefence]

Quite the opposite here... Rainfall hasn’t exactly been plentiful since last May but has been timely for the most part. I Hit the exit trigger on 20% of the cows when they hit 70 cents back in March getting ready for a long, hot dry summer. Had contemplated putting fertilizer out but if I was getting ready for a drought then why fertilize? So I didn’t. Now I’m cutting and baling pasture because I can’t watch it go to waste. Waste not want not.... Hay looks and is making pretty good for what it is and cows being on it till the last couple weeks.

Got grass out the wazoo.

Baling winter grass as fast as we can and can't keep up. Bermuda and klien seems behind , mostly because it's choking on the winter grass. Haygrazer pushing 30" in the good spots....I scrimped on fertilizer to, sure wish I'd spread some before that last shower. Gotta feeling the faucet is about to get turned off.

 

[bird dog]

The wife and I put up a 142 rolls of Oat/Ryegrass yesterday. All under roof. For me its very good hay. The fertilizer I put out in February seemed to have kept it from maturing to early and the lack of rain let us able to get it cut and rolled when needed. Glad to get it done as I feel the same as some of y'all that it may be a dry summer.

 

[chaded]

Fescue is doing good here and the clover has exploded. I started rotating earlier this year compared to last. The places I unrolled hay over the winter you can’t even tell where I did it as far as what they left.

 

[1982vett]

Probably the best clover year I’ve seen. Stuff grew everywhere.

Actually contemplated cutting and baling where I fed hay this year. Never really got wet enough to tear up the ground or get muddy.

 

[Stocker Steve]

It has been dry and cool here for feb/mar/apr. Dirt farmers are ahead of normal and planting in the dust.

I have heavier soils and pastures look OK. My cows are on hill side sacrifice paddocks, and standing by the gate till almost dark. Then they go and eat the daaaam hay. Our normal turnout is second week of May and we are on track for that.

Will see a few more empty pastures this spring. One BTO is retiring, and another BTO' banker forced him to sell half the cows.

 

[chevytaHOE5674]

Last of the snow has yet to melt UP here. The way the forecast is looking grass is still 2-3 weeks out yet.

 

[Till-Hill]

Same here, it's been dry and warm and WINDY! Places I've never been able to walk thru fencing in the spring I drove the UTV thru it. Our oats is up, corn will all be in the ground next day or so. Hay looks terrible. Pastures are ok if they were not grazed down to nothing before it froze, but them are few and far between here. I've only mowed parts of the lawn. If it don't rain we are going to be in a tough spot. Got lots of corn silage on hand, some dry hay but haylage isn't going to last till July 4th for dairy cows..............going to be down in the 30's for lows rest of week to they are saying. Cold rain won't help a lot either...

 

[BFE]

Chaded and Vett, I hope I'm wrong, but we had an early clover explosion in '12. Hopefully this isn't a sign of a similar year.

 

[Banjo]

Chaded and Vett, I hope I'm wrong, but we had an early clover explosion in '12. Hopefully this isn't a sign of a similar year.

What happened in '12? Besides the movie.

 

[Banjo]

I know you can have red clover all over and the next year very little. The guy I buy my red clover from says he frost seeds about 5 lbs every year...since its relatively cheap he says. Sounds like a good idea to me. I see a lot of clover sprouts...some of it could be the Balansa i sowed last year though I'm not sure what it looks like.

 

[tom4018]

About the same shape here. Topped dressed my pasture again Saturday since the buggy messed up on the first time. One hay field of a different variety looks a little better that the others.

 

[Little Joe]

Grass not growing good here in Arkansas either, I was just thinking yesterday of putting out some hay to slow down my rotation so the grass could get ahead. We just haven't had alot of sunny days and we're having alot of cool nights. My fescue and wheat is headed out at anywhere from 12"-24" tall. I put 50# N per acre mid February. On sunny days and warm nights you can almost see the grass grow but just not enough of those days. Crabgrass has just barely peaked out and not growing, starting to see a little bermuda and dallasgrass. I've been running the bushhog behind them this rotation to knock off the stems and seed heads and let a little sun in to the warm season grasses.