Brandon Sears County Extension Agent for Agriculture & Natural Resources

859-623-4072 or brandon.sears@uky.edu

Make plans to attend a special CAIP education meeting on Tuesday August 20th at 6:00 pm at the Madison County Extension Office, 230 Duncannon Lane, Richmond.

Dr Steve Higgins, Director of UK Environmental Compliance will be on hand to discuss several timely topics as we think about managing our livestock this winter.

Topics include: Strategies for reducing mud Heavy use areas/gate crossings Hay feeding structures Supplying water to livestock Farm design and facility layout

A burger meal will be served so please call us at 859-623-4072 if you plan to attend.

If you need CAIP educational credit make every effort to attend this meeting since these opportunities will be limited this fall.

August 2019

A BQCA (Beef Quality and Care Assurance) training will be held Thursday August 29 at 6:00 pm at the Madison County Extension Office for anyone needing to recertify or complete the initial training.

Be sure to attend this training if you need BQCA training for a CAIP project. You will also need this certification for upcoming CPH-45 sales if you plan on selling your cattle that way. BQCA training is good knowledge anyone involved with cattle production can use.

** BQCA Certification is required for reimbursement in CAIP Cost Share for Genetics and Cattle Handling Facilities programs. **

To renew your BQCA Certification, you need to attend this upcoming video training session, Thursday August 29th at 6:00 p.m. at the Madison County Extension Office, 230 Duncannon Lane, Richmond. Please come to Rooms 1 and 2, rear building. Training takes about 2 hours.

Cost is $5 per person, payment by CHECK OR MONEY ORDER ONLY, made payable to KBN. **We cannot mail cash, and cash will not be accepted for this training**

The certification is good for three years.

Please call 859-623-4072 to let us know you are attending, and if you have any questions.

Mid August until the end of September is an ideal time to seed your lawn because of favorable temperatures, adequate moisture, and minimum competition from weeds.

The University of Kentucky has several useful publications and videos on lawn care including information on reseeding, fertilizing and seed selection. Go to http://www.uky.edu/Ag/ukturf/lawns.html to check out this useful information.

Bruce Anderson, Extension Forage Specialist, University of Nebraska Fall is just around the corner. Could you use some extra pasture or hay in late September and October? Oats might be your answer.

Oats may be one of our most under-used fall forages. That’s right. Plain old dull oats. It grows fast, thrives under cool fall conditions, has excellent feed value, and can produce over 2 tons of hay or pasture yet this year. Plus, it dies out over winter, so it protects soil without causing planting problems next spring.

To plant oats, drill about 3 bushels per acre in early August to early Sept for maximum yield potential. Planting after Labor Day is not recommended due to a short growing season. A fully prepared seedbed is usually best, but you can plant oats directly into wheat stubble or other crop residues if weeds are killed ahead of planting. Even flying oats onto corn or bean fields severely damaged by weather or to be chopped early for silage can work, although rye tends to work better for flown on seed. Avoid fields with herbicide carryover, and topdress 50 pounds of nitrogen per acre unless the previous crop was heavily fertilized.

With good moisture, oats will be ready to graze about 6 to 8 weeks after emergence. Calves and yearlings can gain over two pounds per day. Be careful to avoid grass tetany on lush oat pasture; ask your veterinarian if you should supplement with magnesium. Also, don’t suddenly turn livestock out on oat pasture if they have been grazing short or dry pastures. Sudden respiratory problems can occur.

For hay, cut oats soon after plants begin to dry out following a killing freeze, or cut earlier if plants reach a desirable growth stage. Oats can accumulate nitrates, so test hay before feeding.

If you have good soil moisture, give fall oats a try. Some of your best forage growth may still be ahead of you.

We are getting close to the time to reseed grass pastures and hayfields. Keep these things in mind before you put seed in the ground this late summer-early fall:

Establishing grass-legume mixtures: Legumes are more competitive than grasses in the seedling stages because they emerge faster, have a taproot-type root system that penetrates deeper and faster, and develop leaf area more quickly. When seeding a grass-legume mixture, choose the seeding date, rate, and method that give the maximum advantage to the species that you need the most. In general, spring seedings favor legumes, and fall seedings favor grasses.

Renovating with legumes: Adding legumes to existing grass pastures increases forage quality, adds nitrogen to the system, and is desirable in pastures. Begin by suppressing existing sod by grazing or very close mowing. White or red clover may be either broadcast in late winter (January-February) or red clover drilled in early fall (mid Aug-mid Sept). For broadcast seedings, make sure that the existing grass is short enough for some seed to fall on bare ground. It will be necessary to drag or lightly disk the pasture to open up the sod and expose some bare ground. Hoof traffic from livestock can also be an effective way to increase seed to soil contact in some cases where other options are not possible.

Whether it’s spring, summer, fall or winter, you can Plate It Up with delicious recipes that put a new twist on your favorite Kentucky Proud foods. Visit http://fcs-hes.ca.uky.edu/piukp-recipes to find all the Plate It Up recipes using Kentucky Proud products.

Madison County Beekeepers Association will meet on Monday, August 26, 6:00 pm, Madison County Extension Office. For more information call Kent, 859-623-3576 or Paul, 859-582-6172.

4-H Country Ham Auction Madison County 4-H would like to invite you to take part in an exciting new program! Last year, Madison County 4-H introduced the country ham program for youth. We were excited to offer youth the chance to carry on the tradition of curing hams, but we couldn’t stop there. Our youth have also written and delivered speeches about country hams at the Madison County Fair, and they will give their speeches at the state fair as well. We are so proud of them for developing quality communication skills and learning to cure hams, we have decided to host a country ham auction for them to sell their hams! The first annual Madison County 4-H Country Ham Auction will be held at the Madison County Extension Office, 230 Duncannon Lane, Richmond, on Thursday, September 12th at 6:00pm. There will be a meal and silent auction available, and Darrell Tate will be our live auctioneer. We are sure with the support of local businesses and community members, our youth will receive premium prices for their hams. If you would like to come bid on one of their hams you are welcome to do so on your own or in a group. Please feel free to talk to your friends and other members of the community and plan to “go in” on a ham. If you decide to come bid on a ham, please have one member of your group register by calling our office, 859-623-4072, and be ready with the names of the folks in your group.

There is no registration fee for bidders. We would like to ask that you register as soon as possible, but no later than September 2nd. We do have limited seating available for non-bidders at $10/ticket, so if you would like to attend, call our office to register. For more information, or to register please give us a call at 859-623-4072.

Dr. Jimmy Henning, Forage Extension Specialist, University of Kentucky Late cut hay is a fact of life in Kentucky. There are worse things. Drought, for example. It is no failure if some first cuttings of hay are late. Or rain damaged for that matter. The list of things that have to ‘get done’ never ends for the part-time, diversified farmers that form the bulk of the beef cattle producers in Kentucky.

Farmers face a never-ending set of ‘what to do first’ decisions. Something has to be second, or third. So late cuttings of hay happen. The real mistake is to let a less-than-perfect first cutting stop the conversation about hay management because a farmer thinks we in Extension are disappointed. Frankly, it is amazing that anybody in Kentucky gets a good first cutting of hay in the barn.

Next steps if you think your first cutting is just ‘cow hay’...

The first thing to do is to get a representative core sample and send it to a certified lab for analysis. It is best but not absolutely necessary if it goes through the sweat before taking the sample. Next, store the hay inside if possible, but at least get it off the ground (on rock, pallets and so on). If you are going to have more than one cutting or hay from other fields, store so this lot of hay can be accessed and fed as needed.

Once the results are back, do some planning with the UK Beef Cow Supplementation Tool (http://forage-supplement-tool.ca.uky.edu/). This very simple tool will let you determine what you need to feed with your ‘cow hay’ to meet nutritional needs. Knowing your needs early can let you work with your supplier to secure best pricing.

This supplement tool calculates an intake figure from the total fiber in the hay, but you need to make sure actual consumption matches or exceeds the estimates from the tool. You may need to get some current weights for hay bales so you can back calculate intake from hay disappearance. Don’t forget to take into account the waste that happens, even if this is only a guess.

The tool also cannot take into account changing energy needs with weather. As a guide, every 10 degree drop below the ‘thermo-neutral’ temperature increases energy needs by 5%. The thermo-neutral temperature is greatly affected by whether the hair on the cow is wet. The thermo-neutral temperature for cows with dry hair coats is 18 F, but 55 F when that hair is wet. So the energy needs for cows when it is 35 F and raining is 10% higher than that predicted by the tool (55 – 35 is 20 and each 10 degree change means 5% more energy). Thinking back, we had a lot of 35 F and rainy days last winter, and cows lost a lot of condition.

Another thing to remember is that the summer is far from over, and other cuttings may be more timely. Hope springs eternal in a farmer. It has to.

Another idea - Make some serious plans to stockpile tall fescue. A well-managed (not overgrazed) field of tall fescue that is rested from mid-summer into the fall and fertilized with 60 lb of Nitrogen in mid-August can provide better quality feed for cattle than any hay you will likely produce this summer. Grazing stockpiled fescue will lessen days where hay feeding is necessary. Strip grazing the stockpiled fescue will make this high quality forage last longer (due to less waste) and quite possibly reduce mud caused from bale feeding later in the winter.

Remember, just because you made ‘cow hay’ does not mean the forage conversation is over. Not by a long shot.

Happy Foraging.