General Updates

Genevieve Slocum, King’s AgriSeeds Inc.   Common chickweed Agronomists will tell you that weeds are never the problem, but only a symptom of underlying problems. Weeds invade when they have opportunities. Maintaining a thick, healthy stand that competes well with unwanted species is one of the best weed prevention tactics. The growth rate of a…

Penn State Extension Pasture bloat is primarily a problem of cattle that graze pastures where legumes make up greater than 50% of the total forage. You may hear pasture bloat referred to as “frothy” bloat due to the large amount of froth or foam produced in the rumen, which the animal has difficulty eructating. Legumes…

Hay in a day demands a sense of urgency in managing a haylage crop and involves getting the crop dried and ensiled in the shortest amount of time possible. Wide swathing hay is the primary technique used to achieve that, getting more of the swath exposed to the sun for faster drying. Why hay in…

Genevieve Slocum The need for soil building, erosion control and nutrient scavenging doesn’t end with the onset of warm weather; if anything, it only accelerates. It’s an opportunity to be seized, especially since warm season annuals establish quickly, fill gaps in the rotation, tolerate drought and other challenging conditions, and produce large amounts of forage…

Tom Kilcer, Advanced Ag Systems Minimum till haylage is a new process where we optimize the forage planted, carefully watch to harvest at the peak of quality, and then use the mower to mix a pile of dirt, dead bugs, half rotten plant residue into the forage to make sure your feed will have limited…

Dave Wilson, King’s AgriSeeds Research Agronomist At King’s Agriseeds we emphasize the proper time of planting; seeding rate and seeding depth. Proper seed to soil contact is paramount. Your planting equipment should be maintained and in proper order to have successful seeding applications for proper stands. Have you seen corn rows with ‘skips’ in the…

As soils warm in the spring, rising temperatures signal the crowns of winter annuals and perennials to break winter dormancy, and they begin a period of rapid, temperature-responsive growth, a process known as “spring green-up”. Along with that flush of growth comes the need for large amounts of readily available nutrients. When properly managed, winter…

We had some questions this year about combine settings to minimize grain loss. Here are a few good tips that Dave Wilson came across.  By: Dave Mowitz Adjusting a combine is like balancing a tire. True, running a combine is far more complicated than just adding a weight to ensure smooth tire rotation. Keeping a harvester…

The orginal article was published by Amaferm, a silage inoculant supplier whose use of undigested NDF (uNDF) and other measures of forage digestibility are closely aligned with our philosophy and goals to grow more digestible forage.  Fiber Group Continues its Work An informal “Fiber Group” has been working on improving our ability to model rumen fiber turnover.…

Dave Wilson We recently had a customer report rootworm problems in a Bt corn hybrid, which suggested rootworm resistance to the trait. Rootworm resistance to the transgenic Cry Protein (Cry3Bb1) is the main component of Bt resistance and has been observed in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, and South Dakota. Farms that grow continuous corn year…