iDRY Vacuum Kilns

Sponsors:

The Feed Crop, Grain, Forage and Soil Health Thread

Started by mike_belben, September 06, 2021, 04:24:28 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

newoodguy78

Quote from: Nebraska on December 20, 2021, 05:02:44 PM
Its done out here commonly with rye(+/- brasicas, turnips etc). It is flown on with crops in the field mid ish August start, or drilled right behind soybean harvest best if its an earlier maturing soybean type. Mostly used here as a bridge to grass in the spring. Good place to turn out new cow calf pairs. The cows are all mostly out grazing corn stalk residue now that gets dependant on snow cover. A few folks starting to calve now.
From a veterinarians standpoint what's your thoughts on grazing cover crop mixes as far as animal health and weight gain? I'm guessing out your way guys mostly have angus but do you see or have an opinion on what breeds do best on an all grass diet?
I really like the red devons as far temperament and have seen some do really well on total grass diets.

Southside

A couple of the challenges with winter cover crop grazing are keeping dry matter intake high enough and addressing off flavor issues from brassicas.  For milk or meat being finished brassicas will impart an off flavor if fed in too high of a % of the diet, just like wild onion in the spring. The other issue is that although the cover crops are high in protein they are very low in fiber so cows will actually loose weight if that's all they have to eat, so you need to keep the DM up with another feed source.  Thats where the corn stubble / baled stover / grass hay / or stockpiled standing forage comes in.  A reasonable rule of thumb is to strip graze the winter cover crop for a couple of hours at most each day limiting intake, then feed all they will eat of your other feed source.  Logistically that can get to be a challenge depending on field lay out, fencing, water, etc.  

Trying to plant post harvest is really hard, mother nature never cooperates.  Get the crop off nice and early and it will turn popcorn fart dry.  Plenty of fall moisture in the ground means you can't get the crop off in time for the winter cover crop to set in well enough.  

Like the doc said flying the seed in works well, now with precision guidance so does top dressing before the crop closes in the canopy, the seed gets worked into the ground from the rain and does not compete with the primary crop.  As soon as the canopy opens up again be it from harvest or leaf drop the cover crop is already up several inches and off to the races, hopefully that's late summer or early fall so it has plenty of time to produce.  
Franklin buncher and skidder
JD Processor
Woodmizer LT Super 70 and LT35 sawmill, KD250 kiln, BMS 250 sharpener and setter
Riehl Edger
Woodmaster 725 and 4000 planner and moulder
Enough cows to ensure there is no spare time.
White Oak Meadows

Nebraska

As far as I can tell it's great.  Can be too washy as Jim points out.   Helps producers manage space great for calf health. (Spreads them out)...lower density more square footage less illness. Really good for the soil for many reasons. Economically  a good practice if you can manage it.  I don't know about seeding it into summer range like Mike mentioned above. I am too far North likely...I have heard of cows getting an esophageal blockage from too big  a turnip, not necessarily a common event and  other things like hedge apples can do that as well.

As far as I know I have maybe never worked on a Red Devon.  Cow herds here are mostly Angus based, with Simmental, Charolais, Herford, Shorthorn and Maine Anjou being common crosses.  A hand full of Long Horn and a few niche breeds.
All of them will do fine on an all grass/forage type system as that is what the Good Lord designed them for. Big forage fermenting /digesting vats with legs. 
Jim's reply  regarding the off flavors  is true I know with milk. Here the cover crop grazing season  is about 2 months  and it's entirely beef cow / calf operations using it. So any off flavors in meat from the forage really aren't a problem,  because 99% of the cattle are mom's with babies at the side. They have a job for a while.. They won't end up as a burger unless they aren't pregnant come next fall.

mike_belben

ive been trying to find time to convert these screenshots to JPG and upload for atleast a month.  highlights from a 1.5hr or so video with james white, the soil biologist showing what i believe to be among the most cutting edge soil root rhizophagy images.  






















the cliffnotes are that seedling roots need to grow hairs to survive.  the way they do that is by endophyte invasion so to speak.. where bacteria and or fungi go INTO the root.  the plant does some magic, multiplies them before spitting them back into the soil then taking them back up again.  its sorta like lungs continually breathing for air supply.  plant roots are continually sucking up and spitting out microbes to get solube mineral into their tissue.  these microbes are fed carbon and whatever else.. sugars maybe.. by the "root exudates" that the plant is able to create by solar power somehow in gods wonderful design.  

if you dont have living microbial life, you wont germinate seedlings.  the plants feed the microbes and the microbes feed the plants so never have bare soil.. go from planting to planting to planting continually.  tillage will stunt fungal microbial life but in some instances the gain may justify the fungal loss.  soil that is continually tilled will surely die off and grow weeds, compaction and algae blooms far far away.

cliffnote to the cliffnote, is plant cover crops (and imo, find something that eats them so you can later eat it.)
Praise The Lord

farmfromkansas

As breeds go, think the longhorn is considered a poor breed, but is very good when mixed into your angus herd.  Have a neighbor with longhorns, and he uses an angus bull.  I have been buying his solid colored heifers, as I found years ago you can't breed out the odd colors from longhorn crossbreeding. But if one is black or red, you do not have that problem.  The advantages are that a longhorn never has trouble calving, and does well during hot weather. Don't seem to get sick and die either.  One of my neighbors who has a degree from K-state, says there are no genetic defects in the longhorn breed, because of the long time they ran wild in Texas.  Buyers will discount the price of your cattle if they see a longhorn cross, but it only shows up in the color.  Guys who feed cattle like to get the discounted price when they buy and as one neighbor told me, they never lose those, unlike some black cattle that look healthy one day and are dead the next. And the butcher does not care if it has an odd color.
Most everything I enjoy doing turns out to be work

newoodguy78

Have a meeting with an agronomist tomorrow morning. Very interested to hear what he's got to say. He's knowledgeable on some inputs that I've heard of but have no first hand experience with them or know anyone using them.
 He seems like an outside the box thinker which I respect. 
 When I was speaking with him initially about what we're doing now for fertilizer and the rates, he waited until I was done and very calmly said "NEVER trust the same fertilizer company to do your soil analysis, mix your blend and recommend application rates" 
With the price of fertilizer the way it is I'm trying to figure out inputs that are cheaper but produce results. Pulling the plug on commercial fertilizer all at once isn't an option in my opinion, working away from it as quickly as we can certainly is though. 

Southside

I completely agree that cold turkey would not be a good path forward in your situation. If you could fallow ground and do something alternative with it for the transition that's one thing, but having to pay the bills and pull the plug at the same time would be a disaster. 
Franklin buncher and skidder
JD Processor
Woodmizer LT Super 70 and LT35 sawmill, KD250 kiln, BMS 250 sharpener and setter
Riehl Edger
Woodmaster 725 and 4000 planner and moulder
Enough cows to ensure there is no spare time.
White Oak Meadows

newoodguy78

That's what I've done in the last two years is cover cropped the ground we don't have in production. Fortunately we work/have more ground than we have markets for. 
Last year I started getting more intense with the cover crops on ground once the marketable stuff was off vs letting it go to weeds. 
Although my knowledge of them was/is very limited there is improvement showing. 
Letting the weeds get out of hand is an absolute mess around here. This year I'm hoping to up the cover crop game if the funds allow it. 

Southside

Now if you could run those cover crops through a ruminant....

In my experience it's three years before you see anything of sustained improvement, and closer to eight years before things really take off. That's looking at production under stressed conditions. Anybody's grass will be green the second week of May, what's it look like the second week of August is the test. 
Franklin buncher and skidder
JD Processor
Woodmizer LT Super 70 and LT35 sawmill, KD250 kiln, BMS 250 sharpener and setter
Riehl Edger
Woodmaster 725 and 4000 planner and moulder
Enough cows to ensure there is no spare time.
White Oak Meadows

newoodguy78

The desire for ruminants is definitely there they'd fit well....
Maybe I'm looking for success a little too hard in what the cover crops are doing for me. 
This will be the third year on some ground. 
The 8 year observation is interesting not many people talk about the time it takes in the real world. 
The benefits of having longer ideal conditions in adverse situations is part of the long term goal. 

Southside

Organic certification is three years, but honestly that's when the issues begin if you aren't ready for it. 

The way I look at it, my dirt was going in one direction for a long time, so turning it around on a dime isn't going to happen. Weed pressure and such was discouraging for a while, but once things turned the corner, it corrected itself.

The cover crops are awesome, slows down organic material burn off, recovers nutrients, brings them to the root zone. The ruminant just helps keep that where it grew rather than having to till it in, and you get the nitrogen benefit from the urine and manure. 
Franklin buncher and skidder
JD Processor
Woodmizer LT Super 70 and LT35 sawmill, KD250 kiln, BMS 250 sharpener and setter
Riehl Edger
Woodmaster 725 and 4000 planner and moulder
Enough cows to ensure there is no spare time.
White Oak Meadows

newoodguy78


mike_belben

glad to hear it 78.  please let us know what he has to say.  

if youve never listened to him, i encourage you to look into what rick haney has to say.  he reinvented soil analysis in a way that gives credit to organic matter and nitrogen already present that most analysis does not.  they just kinda say if you want this many bushel corn you supply this much nitrogen, all of it, from a truck.  

well, theres nitrogen in the ground and the air already. haney tests measure how much, and reduce the purchased N by that amount to get the same yield. 

dont let the weeds discourage you. they are built to mineralize topsoil.  if theyre present, theyre doing something beneficial.. transferring a subsoil mineral into the topsoil that it was lacking. in time with nutrient and microbial improvement the weeds can be replaced with higher order plants (making weeds appear to go go away) because theyve done their jobs and made a habitat suitable for the new species.  
Praise The Lord

mike_belben

a thing ive noted, we just hit our normal freeze thaw weather after two weeks of mostly frozen.  not deep but no daytime softening.  we had total maybe 8 or 10 inches of snow with thawing, rain, ice and snow again in that time.  the bed where i planted rows of brassicas for us in a thick clover groundcover has had quite a bit of frost kill.  its still green but struggling, got that yellowish limpness and frostbitten extremities.  

the corn patch bed from this past summer i planted at the same time, thick with winter wheat, AWP and clovers has had no frost kill at all and i constantly tear off the high clumps for chicken feed which they devour.  it grows back thicker and thicker.  i did till this bed but it had a lot more OM than the other newest and largest one down about 20ft lower where the runoff flows.  ive channelled the runoff to a little stream so its not flooding but that area is always higher moisture. never grown anything there and it was solid clay/demo fill from where i had a pond i filled in.  it is planted in the same cover but is much, much slower in establishment which i think is due to less OM mostly.  its the area that i take in wood chips for.  i hope to thicken it a foot in the coming few years or so and then have it as a vegetable garden lined by dwarf fruit trees or maybe berry/vine stuff.  i havent really decided. 
Praise The Lord

farmfromkansas

Moved a couple loads of compost to the east quarter yesterday, had a pile from cleaning up a bedding pile and cleaning out the cattle shed, has been piled a few months, and it has been a couple months since we had any rain, but when I scooped up the pile found damp spots that actually steamed.  Looked like it was on fire, so I grabbed a handful, and it was not hot enough to burn.  Nice black color.  The coop brought 3 truck loads of spoiled grain, it has not been wet enough to compost. So will have to wait to spread that.  Hoping to get this compost spread on the grass soon as it is warm enough for about 3 days.  Had the covid a few weeks ago, kind of took my motivation for a while.
Most everything I enjoy doing turns out to be work

mike_belben

Praise The Lord

Southside

Franklin buncher and skidder
JD Processor
Woodmizer LT Super 70 and LT35 sawmill, KD250 kiln, BMS 250 sharpener and setter
Riehl Edger
Woodmaster 725 and 4000 planner and moulder
Enough cows to ensure there is no spare time.
White Oak Meadows

newoodguy78


Southside

We were going to certify when Organic Valley was going to run a truck here and get milk, but after their market changed there was no financial benefit to be had with certification.  I can see it getting you a premium when shipping to larger markets, co-ops and such, but where we direct sell and have an open door policy, nobody is going to pay more just for some paperwork, at least not in our customer base. 
Franklin buncher and skidder
JD Processor
Woodmizer LT Super 70 and LT35 sawmill, KD250 kiln, BMS 250 sharpener and setter
Riehl Edger
Woodmaster 725 and 4000 planner and moulder
Enough cows to ensure there is no spare time.
White Oak Meadows

newoodguy78

I worked on a dairy that went certified organic while I was there. The owner was an exceptional business man, cheaper than tripe but a very good farmer. While he believed in the organic way I do believe the financial side ultimately drove the switch from conventional.  Ended up being a very good decision to do so.
Since then corporate business entered the equation and changed rules and regulations. The end result in my understanding sucked a major amount of the potential financial benefit out of it and leaves the consumer with a misrepresented product.
Direct marketing as much of a pain as it is to deal with, is about the only way I see for a small producer to get paid fairly and the consumer to know just what goes into producing their purchase and how it's done.

mike_belben

Gabe brown, his wife and son farm 6k acres regeneratively in south dakota and he gets paid to fly all over for lectures.  Says there is absolutely no way he will jump through the hoops to certify.  Has an open door come and see farm with direct retail and has set the business into small chunks for liablity so his farm side sells stock and crop to his marketing side and checks change accounts and they all turn an impressive profit.  Big enough that theyve built their own USDA processing plant.  

His profit margin is pretty tremendous and he sells out of everything without being forced into the corners that commodity buyers invent.  Impressive operation that anyone could benefit by looking into.  I hope he is the ag model of the future.  Big family farm with no subsidy and minimal inputs. Great on the land. He is bringing acres back to high output.
Praise The Lord

Mooseherder

I've watched Gabe's presentations a few times on YouTube.  He and his family built quite an operation from the ashes. 

wisconsitom

The input side Mike, the input side.  If you can get the land working for itself, which as guys like you know can and will happen if only encouraged and allowed to happen, far fewer such inputs needed.

NE Wisconsin, where my land sits, is actually a large and varied region, with my immediate area lying on a sort of diagonal transition line between the woods and what amounts to a pretty heavy ag belt.  I wish it looked like these operators were trying to get out of the box they're in, but I tells ya true, when October roles around, you might be going down the road with your wipers on, to clear the corn chaff that's making a raging blizzard.  I wish I was joking.😒  You'll want to be doing your very best defensive driving around the fleets of grain trucks running the roads and entering/exiting fields.  Watch out!
Ask me about hybrid larch!

mike_belben

i appreciate that theyre doing an honest days work but ill tell ya, i dont eat much corn. if i were only living on what i grow itd be a pretty meager existence to.  

i hope to spend the rest of my life figuring out how god intended his creation operates, and i hope he gives me countless acres to steward on his behalf. if not, this 5 keeps me busy enough. 
Praise The Lord

wisconsitom

It's all feed corn.  Dairy mega-factory farms, big parking lots for the migrant workforce, thousands of head.  All the ramshackle places get bought out, torn down, and made into bigger fields.  Just push the old house, barn or whatever, every tree in site, into a burn pile.

Wisconsin grows the most sweet corn of any state, but the vast majority of what you're  seeing is feed corn.
Ask me about hybrid larch!

Thank You Sponsors!