Thursday, October 31, 2024

If you have not yet adopted management intensive grazing, you should now. At the end of 2007, I figured I would be spending my winter talking about how to evaluate and renovate pastures after the drought. Boy, was I wrong.

Over the past year, there have been many articles that have discussed practices to improve pasture productivity, and those that have a positive influence on the environment.

The time of the year when frost seeding is most effective in Ohio will not be here until February or March.

As the leaves start turning and the nights get colder, our usual crops of orchardgrass, ryegrass and alfalfa begin to winterize.

The drought that hit much of the state this summer added new wrinkles in forage and water management for many livestock producers.

Dryness leads to poisonous grazing With dry weather in many parts of the area, the potential for animals to eat toxic plants increases, mostly because they're hungry and not much forage is available for grazing.

Are you wondering how much to invest in fertilizer this year? We will soon be approaching the period of the forage growing season critical for stockpiling pastures.

Storing hay, after production, has a cost to the farm operator in terms of time, effort and machinery required to move bales from production areas to storage areas and then to feeding areas.

Well, it never fails. We go out there with the perfect plans and plant the perfect pasture. In no time at all, undesirable plants find a way to grow with our crop.

Frost seeding of legumes in February and early March can be used to improve pasture quality and yield.