It’s the first week in May and you know some guy in your neighborhood tries to beat all the rest by getting a field of hay rolled up. The hay most of us have has gone to seed. Fescue does that about the third week in April. But it sure isn’t going to make many pounds of hay in the fields I’ve seen. Even farmers that fertilize have short forage. Is that due to three years of drought? Did the past dry weather kill lots of the forage?
While April was about 120 percent rainfall compared to none last year, things look real stingy when it comes to cutting. I don’t have a lot of facts or comparison but we get the first wet spring and we aren’t any better off. The snow was no help, while it set a record, the cooler weather didn’t help the grass grow any either.
How long has it been since you soil tested? It may be time to try that and learn what has happened to your soil during the three-year drought. Even the orchardgrass growing along my driveway is gone. I suspect it is gone in your fields too. It is twice the forge grass as fescue and I saw it take over hay meadows. A man told me the old farm fields before the drought of the ‘50s were covered in orchardgrass. He said free-range cattle down in the hills did wonderful on it. But in that drought those cattle licked the fields bare.
I am anxious to see my friend’s fields; he sowed in orchardgrass last fall. I plan to get over and see it. I recall in the ‘60s how many farmers had to plant annuals like sudan crosses to supplement their hay supply. But let me warn you, they grow well, but some times end up with too much nitrogen in them. Plus, unless you wrap or shed the round bales they let a lot of rain inside the bale and you will have more loss. Expensive to plant, they can in 80 days prove fodder in a field you will later replant. Don’t let it grow to 6 feet, cut it when the head first shows. The quality will be much better for the cow’s sake. I imagine folks are also looking at their Bermuda stands and wondering if with warmer weather if they are going to come out of it.
Looks like to me evaluating is going to be a big plan for lots of folks. County agents can help you with a forage plan. There are lots of new things on the market. I see more sod seeder in the country than ever before.
A field up by Clifty is the best demonstration of one used. This was rolling country and they had treated the field twice with Roundup the fall before. Then they’d sod alfalfa seed in the former fescue field. It was spell binding. I’ve talked to Gene Hutchens about that several times. He told me it was that for sure.
An old cowboy northeast of Hindsville, Ark., used his to sow wheat every year on some hills I could hardly stand up on. Wilson Shuff was real grass man and a cattleman. I also knew another man had an older model with an 18-inch bar setting, who mowed fescue hay then the next week, they sowed it to sudan with his sod seeder. But because his seeding was so far apart the fescue came back after two sudan cuttings.
There will be lots of folks with forage problems ahead. But who ever said, farming was easy? God bless you and America.
Western novelist Dusty Richards and his wife Pat live on Beaver Lake in northwest Arkansas. For more information about his books you can email Dusty by visiting ozarksfn.com and clicking on ‘Contact Us’ or call 1-866-532-1960.
