Nebraska Extension is a Division of the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln cooperating with the Counties and the United Sates Department of Agriculture. Nebraska Extension educational programs abide with the nondiscrimination policies of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and the United States Department of Agriculture. © 2016

http://extenson.unl.edu/statewide/harlan PO Box 258 Alma, NE 68920 Phone: 308-928-2119

January 2018

HARLAN COUNTY EXTENSION NEWSLETTER

PRIVATE PESTICIDE TRAINING JANUARY 16 @ 9:30 AM

or FEBRUARY 22 @ 9:30 AM

Harlan County Courthouse Meeting Room - Alma, NE RSVP to Harlan County Extension at 308-928-2119

one week prior to the class.

2018 HARLAN COUNTY 4-H BEEF WEIGH-IN DAY

JANUARY 20, 2018 9:30AM-11:30AM Harlan Feeders

71049 L Rd, Orleans, NE *If you plan to participate in the Harlan County Beef Rate of Gain

Contest, or show beef at the Nebraska State Fair and/or AKSARBEN, you should come to the Harlan County Beef Weigh-in

Day, January 20, from 9:30-11:30am at Harlan Feeders. (No other weigh date will be accepted for the County Rate of

Gain Contest)

Parents and 4-H’ers will need to provide all the necessary signa-tures where required on the 4-H Market Beef Ownership Affidavit. The ID sheets will be provided at weigh-in or can be picked up at the Extension Office prior to the weigh-in date. If a parent or 4-H’er CANNOT be present at the weigh-in, please take the necessary action to stop by the Extension Office and pick up the ID sheets and ear tags. We need to have paperwork signed by the 4-H’er and parent. DNA samples are required and must be on file prior to the April 1st deadline for all market beef animals being considered for the Nebraska State Fair and/or AKSARBEN.

HOMEMAKER’S JANUARY JUBILEE

COST: $40 Price increase effective

January 1, 2018

5:30 p.m. - L.T.L.

6:00 p.m. - 8 Essential Elements of Positive Youth

Development

6:45 p.m. - Evening Meal

7:15 p.m. - Guest Speaker - Nebraska CASA

7:30 p.m. - Awards Presentation & Meeting

A Letter with full details will be mailed to all Homemakers.

REMEMBER: Please RSVP by January 22nd!

Monday, January 29th, 2018

Find us on Facebook! at https://www.facebook.com/harlancountyext/ Stay up to date on events, view photos, learn interesting facts

and anything else we happen to post.

2018 Special Garden Project Delft Blue Nigella

This project is open to all YOUTH OF 4-H AGE and it will give them the opportunity to learn about growing

harvesting, and exhibiting this unique flower. Interested Youth should enroll for the Special Garden Project

through 4-HOnline.com and contact the Extension Office.

* Grow an unusual flower * Learn about Delft Blue Nigella

* Enter this cut flower at County & State Fair.

4-H’ers enrolled in the Special Garden

Project will:

* Receive a ‘packet’ of Delft Blue Nigella

(one packet per youth) in March/April

* Receive a newsletter about:

- Planting & growing Nigella

- Nigella problems & insects

- Harvesting & using Nigella

2018 West Central Cattlemen’s Day Series By Erin Laborie, Nebraska Extension Educator Nebraska Extension and Colorado State University Extension will be hosting a series of winter meetings for cattle pro-ducers in ten locations across west-ern Nebraska and eastern Colorado. The program is designed to help producers evaluate management practices that could improve their bottom line, by discussing topics including nutritional management to prepare for the breeding season, grazing management principles, im-plant strategies, lameness in cattle, fly research up-dates, methods to increase productivity of spring calv-ing systems and more.

Cow/Calf Producers, you are invited to the Ninth Annual West Central Cattlemen’s Day at

Mulligan’s Restaurant in Oxford on January 11, 2018. Registration will begin at 5:30

p.m. Cost to attend is $10. Please pre-register for a meal count by calling

(308) 268-3105, or emailing erin.laborie@unl.edu by January 9th.

2018 Dates and locations include:

January 11th - Minden, NE, Kearney County

Fairgrounds 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., (308) 832-0645

January 11th - Oxford, NE, Mulligan’s Restaurant

5:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., (308) 268-3105 January 15th - Imperial, NE, Mid-Plains Community

College 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. MST, (308) 882-4731 January 16th - Curtis, NE, NCTA Education Center

5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., (308) 367-4424 January 17th - Ogallala, NE, Open Range Restaurant

5:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. MST, (308) 284-6051 January 24th - Culbertson, NE, Hitchcock County Fair-

grounds 5:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., (308) 345-3390

* Please register at the local Extension office one week prior to the event for a meal count. Cost to attend varies based on location.

Remember you need to enroll or

re-enroll for the upcoming 4-H year.

What better time than now to sign

up for the 2018 4-H year? 4-H Online

is OPEN!! All you need to do is up-

date your information. If you are re–

enrolling, DO NOT make a new fami-

ly profile! If you have problems up-

dating or enrolling for the first time,

let the office know by emailing Dawn

at dawn.hetrick@unl.edu or calling

308-928-2119.

Explore over 150 Nebraska 4-H projects through the Nebraska 4-H Pick Your Project and find the 4-H projects that will help you grow

throughout 2018! All across Nebraska 4-H youth are beginning to select their 4-H projects for 2018! Let the Nebraska 4-H Pick Your Project help connect you with projects that fit your interests and skill levels!

The interactive, web-based Nebraska 4-H Pick Your Project is found online at http://4hcurriculum.unl.edu. Using the Pick Your Project, youth, volunteers, and parents will be able to search for projects by keywords, cur-riculum areas, knowledge levels, and geographic level.

As an added feature, the web-based Pick Your Project contains the same project codes that are shown in the 4HOnline Enrollment system, making it easier to match the exciting 4-H pro-jects you are learning about in the Pick Your Project with the projects you are enrolling in through 4HOnline.

Select 2018 4-H Projects by Using the Online Search Feature!

PICK UP YOUR Harlan County

4-H LIVESTOCK EAR TAGS! Only showing your animal at County Fair? Whether Swine, Beef, Sheep or Goat, be sure to stop by the Extension Office to pick up your FREE 4-H Tags for your 4-H Livestock. Also, available are the EID tags for use at State Fair and AKSARBEN for Beef and Swine

exhibitors.

February 22-23 Holiday Inn Convention Center

Kearney, Nebraska Early Bird Registration Price: $125

(Through Feb. 4) Starting Feb. 5 = $150

For more information visit https://wia.unl.edu/

HARLAN COUNTY HOMEMAKER CLUBS’ ANNUAL

SCHOLARSHIP

Harlan County Homemaker Clubs sponsor THREE $250.00 scholarships. Scholarships are awarded to high school seniors who plan to further their education in any field at any accredited school.

Open Scholarships – Two (2) Presented There will be two “Open Scholarships” presented. This is open to any graduating senior who

resides in Harlan County.

Homemaker Club Scholarship – One (1) Presented One Homemaker Club Scholarship presented to a graduating senior, whose mother or

grandmother is a member of a Harlan County Homemaker Club and the graduating senior must be a resident of Harlan County.

All applications for the scholarship need to be in at the Harlan County Extension Office by noon on Monday, February 19, 2018. The recipients and alternates will be

announced at the Scholarship Luncheon, which will be held on Monday, March 26, 2018.

Scholarship applications can be obtained from local school guidance counselor and from the Harlan County Extension Office.

Recycling Christmas trees Shelter for birds, feeding station, mulch, fish

Before disposing your Evergreen Christmas tree this year, consider using it in your own landscape. * Cut your tree into branches and use them to mulch your strawberries or landscape beds. The trunk can then be cut for firewood. * Use it to create a backyard habitat for birds. Your old Christmas tree provides excellent shelter for birds, providing protection from wind and predators. It can also serve as a feeding station, where you provide a buffet of food that our native birds love. * Add strings of popcorn, cranberries or raisins. Apples, oranges, leftover breads and pine cones covered with peanut butter then dipped in birdseed can also be added. Suet is especially attractive to insect-eaters such as woodpeckers, chick-adees, and nuthatches and is a good winter energy source. * Finally, if you live on a farm or acreage old Christmas trees can be sunk into ponds or lakes to create habitat for young fish.

By Sarah Browning, UNL Extension Educator

Why Did My Chickens Stop Laying? Egg production is a remarkable thing. A pullet (young female chicken) begins laying eggs at 18 to 20 weeks of age. She reaches peak production at about 35 weeks, with a production rate greater than 90 percent (that’s 9 eggs in 10 days for a single hen). Normally, chickens will produce well until they are 2 to 3 years old, and then egg production declines. Hens stop laying eggs for a variety of reasons. External and internal stimuli affect hormone levels. The most common stimuli that affect egg production are decreasing day length, disease, broodiness, poor nutrition and stress. However, even under ideal conditions, every hen’s egg production eventually slows down and stops. Egg production is a hen’s reproductive activity. It is not a requirement for hens to thrive. When a hen experiences stress, even minimally, she may respond by ceasing egg production. Moving, handling, overheating, fright, and lack of food or water are stresses that can be detrimental to egg production. Protection from the elements and predators, clean and well- maintained facili-ties, adequate ventilation, constant availability of feed and water, etc. will reduce stress and help maintain high egg production. Decreasing day length causes hens to molt and cease egg production, a process that may take several months. Poultry need a minimum day length of 14 hours of light in order to continue regular ovulation and egg production activity. Our day lengths in Nebraska typically become less than 14 hours by mid-September. So often we see our laying hens backing off their rate of egg production as we go through the fall months and approach winter. Molting is a natural process that allows the hen to replace old, worn feathers and rejuvenate her oviduct, the organ that “makes” eggs. Broodiness is the natural tendency for a hen to sit on her eggs to hatch chicks. Most hens eventually go broody, some breeds more than others. When a hen becomes broody, hormonal changes result in the stoppage of laying eggs. To reduce broodiness, collect eggs daily from nests and hiding places. If a hen shows a desire to stay on the nest for extended periods, remove her and restrict access to the nest for several days. After a period, the broody behavior will cease and she will return to egg production. Maintaining a healthy, well-managed flock will result in high producing hens and many high-quality eggs for the family or for sale. All hens, eventually cease egg pro-duction. Source: Why Did My Chickens Stop Laying? Oregon State University Extension publication PNW 565, Jan. 2003

Do you want to keep your hens in egg production through the winter months?? Then you have to trick them. The simple solution to this problem is to contain your hens in a coop after dusk and offer artificial lighting up to approximately 10:00 pm each evening. The artificial light provided does not have to be intense, a small wattage lamp should be adequate, but the light needs to come on at dusk. If the hens are exposed to more than one hour of dark, they think it is night-time and will not pro-

duce an egg for the next day. So through most of the fall and winter, if the sun is up by 8:00 AM and your birds are exposed to adequate natural day length, adding artificial light till 10:00 pm each day will give your hens a 14 hour photoperiod, which should

be enough light stimulation to keep their reproductive activities going. The hens are also going to need protection from the cold and ade-

quate food intake to keep laying eggs through the winter months. If the hen has to use all of her food sources to keep warm, she’ll not be in-

clined to spend valuable calories on egg production. So if your hens are free range and out in the cold, be sure to increase their feeding rate to

provide energy for both body heat production and egg production.

CHICKEN PREDATORS Weasels will rip open the jugular vein and feed on the blood. Rats feed on eggs and young birds, rarely both-ering older poultry. Racoons commonly kill several birds and sev-er the heads eating the crop and neck meat. They sometimes will take the body. They may reach through small holes in a wire fence, grab a chick-en's head or leg, and pull it through the opening. Owls If your poultry enclosure does not have a cover, or the birds are left out overnight, the owls will find them. Headless bodies are a good sign. Great horned owls can carry away the whole car-cass. Dogs are the most destructive killer of chickens. If many birds are killed and few or none are eaten it is likely dogs are the predator. Coyotes can access chicken enclosures by dig-ging under, climbing over, or chewing through chicken wire fences. There may be multiple kills and they will return until the chickens are gone or the fence improved. House cats can be major predators of baby chicks, but are unlikely to challenge larger birds. Bobcats, if the chicken is gone and there is a smell of cat urine, bobcats might be likely. Mink will make a opening in the neck area and pull the skinned head or body through the hole as they feed. They will kill and pile multiple birds together for later feeding. Skunks and Opossums are omni-vores. They usually feed on young birds, eggs. If they do kill adult chickens, it will usually be by mauling them with repeated bites on many body areas. Both are active at night and would make sin-gular kills.

Turning Grass into Profits

Pasture poultry is a niche market that capitalizes on consumer de-mand for natural, humane and environmentally sound production prac-tices. Consumers demanding this type of product are generally willing to pay more since many consider it to be healthier and tastier. In a pasture poultry system the birds supplement grain fed by forag-ing for up to 20 percent of their intake. In this system the birds are moved frequently to fresh pastures by means of portable housing and pasture pens including “chicken tractors”. Pasture poultry can be part of an integrated animal production sys-tem. This type of system focuses not just on the product produced, but also the services provided by the animals. For example poultry may provide: fertilization, tillage, and insect and weed control. Commonly in this type of system various species of domestic animals; are raised together to complement each other. This type of system can also benefit animal health; by breaking disease cycles. Before beginning a pasture poultry enterprise one should consider a number of factors; customer base, time and dedication and facilities. One resource to assist one in getting started is, The National Sustainable Agriculture Infor-mation Service (http://attra.ncat.org). They have pub-lications addressing all aspects of pasture poultry production.

By Jessica Jones, UNL Extension Educator

How To Keep Your Hens Laying Through Winter By Sheila Scheideler, UNL Extension Poultry Specialist

Harlan County Extension

PO Box 258 706 Second Street Alma, NE 68920

Calendar of Events January 1 - HAPPY NEW YEAR!! - Office Closed

January 11 - West Central Cattlemen’s Day @ 5:30 pm at Mulligan’s Restaurant, Oxford

January 16 - Pesticide Training @ 9:30 am - Harlan County Court-house, Alma

January 20 - Beef Weigh-in Day @ 9:30am - 11:30am - Harlan Feed-ers, Orleans

January 29 - Homemakers January Jubilee

February 22 - Pesticide Training @ 9:30 am - Harlan County Court-house, Alma

February 22 - 23 - 2018 Women in Agriculture Conference - Kearney

In This Issue

Harlan County 4-H Beef Weigh-in

Private Pesticide Training

Homemaker’s January Jubilee Date

Scholarship Announce-ment

2018 Special Garden Project

2018 West Central Cat-tlemen’s Day Series

4-H Enrollment and Pick Your Project

More!!

HARLAN COUNTY EXTENSION NEWSLETTER

The Harlan County Extension Office will be closed

January 15 in observation of Martin Luther King Day

Harlan County Extension Office Hours: Monday - Friday: 8:30 am - 4:30 pm

CLOSED FOR LUNCH 12:30 - 1:30pm Hours may flex due to programming &/or workshops