Diamonds in the Rough: Products to get to know better
By Joy Beam Summer Feast: 88% Wonderleaf Millet 12% T-Raptor Hybrid Brassica Diversity has certainly been one of the latest fads in forages: adding more and more species to your cover crop or pasture mix for increased production and soil health. But past a certain point, more is not necessarily better, nor is it always…
Now is the Time…
…To Take Steps to Survive Low Dairy Prices By Leon Ressler, Lancaster Farming (Original article:Â http://www.lancasterfarming.com/agriculturalinformation/1031-NowTime#.Vjd6nH6rSM9) This year, the dairy industry is experiencing a down cycle similar to 2009 and 2012. These volatile market swings are not new or unexpected. Extension dairy specialist Virginia Ishler says there are management practices that can be implemented to help…
Build Good Soils with Forage
You may have thought that planting a cover crop and leaving it alone until termination and planting of the cash crop is the best way to get all the soil benefits of the ground cover. Cover crops by themselves certainly improve soil biodiversity, soil organic matter levels (which influence tilth and moisture capacity), nutrient…
Taking a look at remedies for no-till’s side effects
The push to adopt no-till and its impact on farm ecosystems and watersheds has created a massive transformation over recent decades – including some effects we hadn’t prepared for. With a nationwide trend into no-till agriculture since 2000, 1/3 of US crops are now planted without tillage or with only minimal tillage. The Chesapeake…
The Benefits of Clipping Pastures
Try out a simple pasture management upgrade this year – invest a little time to clip grass after each grazing, especially a heavy grazing. It evens out pasture, promoting uniform regrowth, and preserves the forage in a vegetative state. If the cattle have grazed selectively, it prevents the overlooked species from becoming rank before the…
Hay in a Day: What does it really mean?
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…
Tips for Preventing Pasture Bloat
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…
Frosted Summer Annuals- NOW WHAT?
David Hunsberger – King’s AgriSeeds, Central Regional Coordinator As the calendar marches its way into late October nighttime temperatures drop and we will be seeing Frost nip our plants into submission.  While we acknowledge dates are dependent on latitude, elevation, and cloud cover to name just a few we all know the event will happen…
Harvesting BMR Forage Sorghum
Original article by Tom Kilcer, Advanced Ag Systems The season is quickly arriving at harvest time. Our BMR brachytic forage sorghum has done well in spite of the extremely dry weather. It was planted the 25 of May but stood still for a while until it got watered (June 3 planting was killed by chilling…
Selecting the correct seeding rate for sorghum based on its seeds per pound.
By Tracy Neff Sorghum seed, whether its forage sorghum, sorghum sudan or a sudangrass comes in varying seed size. The size of the seed (seeds per pound) will vary based on variety and/ or the growing conditions where the seed was produced from year to year. Quite often drier conditions during the seed production of…
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