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Part 2 of our conversation with John David Johnson from West Virginia Extension. Today we get into forage production and hay quality. Enjoy!
Hosted by members of the University of Minnesota Extension Beef and Dairy Teams, The Moos Room discusses relevant topics to help beef and dairy producers be more successful. The information is evidence-based and presented as an informal conversation between the hosts and guests.
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Dr. Joe: Welcome to The Moos Room, everybody. Dr. Joe, here. We are continuing our conversation from last week with John David Johnson from West Virginia. Lots of good information in this episode. Thank you for listening. Let's get to it. Emily, do you have a question? I saw you--
Emily: I actually was going to put Bradley on the spot because he is really, really, really quiet.
Joe: Do it.
Emily: Bradley, ask a question.
Bradley: I've been waiting, I've been listening. Actually, I'm interested in, you talk about grasses and forages and things like that, what are people using there? In the Midwest, we tend to use fescues and clovers, maybe a little alfalfa, orchard grass, things like that. Is it the same? Is it different?
John David Johnson: It's a little different. Y'all have probably more big blue stem and stuff like that, some of the native grasses. Would y'all run those? Not, not much.
Bradley: Not really. Not really. Some do. I guess it depends on the year. That's maybe even more west of us into the Dakotas and [crosstalk]
John: We're running similar then. We're more similar in that aspect than probably how I thought. We're running a lot of horse testing. We're trying to get away from the Kentucky 31. It has [unintelligible 00:01:40] [crosstalk] without Uncle Lloyd, that has a little bit of problems, but you can manage it. It can be managed very well. It can be managed. The ones that are not getting away from that, when they need to fight friendly. Fescue, we are working with to put that orchard grass in to put bluegrass in the clovers, because the clovers will help break down that alkaloid there and reduce the effects, and also increase the nutrition.
That is one thing. I was waiting till you got around to-- I figured we'd go to forages and maybe soils because a lot of people, they- "I'm a beef producer. That's all I want to do, grow beef." Yes, you are a beef producer, that's what you're selling, but you're also a forage producer because our [crosstalk]. Feed is forage. You need to take after looking at the management plans of these forages. Then that goes back to the soils, so you're really a soil health production-based operation that increases forage growth, that increases beef growth. Excuse me, I'm tongue-tied today.
It's a pyramid and it all builds up from the soil, to the pasture, and to the cattle. I've been resting on this-- We have pasture sticks. I'm sure you have pasture sticks, right?
Bradley: Yes.
John: I keep one around until my little girl who thinks it's a sword and totes it off and goes, gets the trees, and roughs it up so much you can't even use it anymore. You measure your forage. You always want to leave that two-inch to three-inch mark there, and then you start measuring from there up to see how much forage you got. We're tall fescue, we're orchard grass, blue grass, Ladino clover. I like to mix a little red clover in there.
Bradley: Most people here, at least in the Midwest, don't know what Kentucky 31 is. Most of us thinking meadow fescues. What are some of the advantages of Kentucky 31?
John: Kentucky 31, in our area is very vigorous. It grows well. That's the reason why it grows well because that endophyte in it is a fungus. It gets in the leaf and especially in the seed head is concentrated. That gives it that vigor, that extra growth that helps protect it. Kentucky 31 was like the native fescue that they found. I want to say they found it around Macon, Georgia.
Bradley: I think it is, yes.
John: It's somewhere up in there. It's on every farm in West Virginia. It grows very well. It's very hard to kill. If you want to go with another type of fescue, you can get that done, but eventually, it'll creep back, if you're not watching it very closely. It's that cool season grass. We're really good with the cool seasons varieties up here in our altitude and our weather. We are not so set up for warm season, forage like the bermudas, the brachiarias. Now we do get some good crabgrass. It's not a grass, it's weed, but I love it. It's a highly nutritious weed.
Bradley: In Missouri, a lot of their pastures are crabgrass. Cows actually milking. Dairy cows do quite well on it. We graze quack grass up here in the Midwest, in Mineola. The crab farmers think that that's a weed, but actually it's pretty good nutrition for a cow on pasture.
John: It only depends on where it's growing, if it's a crop or a weed. The corn plant and the soybean fills the weed. Exactly. No, we do not have the availability of that warm season. What I'm looking at is introducing these warm-season annuals. I was talking to Emily and she spurred me thinking about the annuals. She mentioned that. I've done some pearl millet trials, sorghum. I'm going into some sorghum trials, hopefully, next year. Some Sudangrass.
Stuff like that, getting that Sudangrass or that pearl millet or any of these warm season annuals and put them into that grazing strategy with the cool season peaks. We cannot plant warm-season annuals up here till May. I'm from South Georgia. In March, we'll plant. Up here, it's May before you can get that 65 degrees and higher soil temperature that you need.
Bradley: Probably at about the same situation that we are. We've done some research out here where we've planted warm-season annuals. BMR sorghum Sudangrass has worked quite well. We have used tuft grass, maybe not quite as hardy. Sorghum Sudangrass is wonderful. It grows quite well. I'll recommend that one.
John: The sorghum Sudan, too, grass is a little bit better on drought than the pearl millet if you compare them two.
Bradley: Oh, yes. People use pearl millet here because you don't have to worry about protic acid, the poisoning in it. Whereas the sorghum Sudangrass, you deal with. I don't worry about it because I think you can manage it right and it frost and deal with it. It's not a problem. Some people just don't want to have to think about it so they plant millets or Japanese millet or pearl millet or something like that.
John: I got some guys even going with baleage systems, wrap bales with those annuals too they've never had before. Of course, it skyrockets your production, but you have to wrap them here because we can't dry them down. It's impossible to get it dried down to that dry hay stage, drop that respiration. Because what is it? You want to get it under 40% when respiration really stops in grass? I think somewhere around there, to get that respiration stopped and actually physically dry it down. It's almost impossible with our climate to do that with annuals. We can do that with the tall fescue and the orchard grass and all that.
These guys are starting to get these wrap bales because we've had a lot of wet years, summers. It bit them trying to make hay when it's raining every day. I'm not sold on the value of the wrap bale as far as beef goes. Now, we might differ there. I think in dairy operations, those baleage, there is benefit there, but as far as a strictly beef operation, you don't see the economical benefit as much as you would in dairy. There is some benefit there, but economically, you can feed that dry, good quality hay and still get by without the investment.
What I tell people, we have a lot of people who make hay in Jackson County. I might not say this on a podcast in Jackson County because I buy all my hay. [chuckles]
Emily: The truth comes out. [chuckles]
John: Yes. I'll be honest with y'all because it is not going to affect my wallet. If you have less than 40 cows, it's cheaper to buy, as far as to get the equipment, maintain it, depreciation and everything else, around here anyway. So many people make hay here, I buy all my hay. I think of it this way, for that fescue and orchard grass, it takes 12 pounds of P205 and 40 pounds of K2O to make one ton of hay. That's what's in a ton of hay. I'm putting that out on my pasture from somebody else's field and I'm getting half that cost back in fertilizer, the way I'm looking at it, because the cow's going to give you $1 a day in manure.
I teach this in a lot of soil sampling and grass management in high schools. I go in FFA, on usual years, not this year. I doubt I could even walk through the door this year. They wouldn't let me in. Usually, on a normal year, I do that. I tell them boys, I say, "Well, when you go home, if your dad ever tells you BS ain't worth nothing, you tell him it's worth a dollar a day" [laughter], and yes, one of them got whooping.
Those kids, they love that, and they take this information home, and I can start to see producers starting [unintelligible 00:10:15] just where the younger kids are feeding hay, and they said, "Hey, I'd rather move that polyline and feed on the hilltop every year." I like to work with the youth too in these topics.
Joe: I think we don't talk about that enough in Minnesota. It seems there's a lot of people that are so insistent on making their own forage, even if it makes zero economic sense. I know dairies that buy all their hay, and even milking 200 cows, so I think that you can do it. Now, there's a lot of different things you got to think about when you're buying hay, and I never buy hay without a test that shows me what I'm buying. That's probably where we need to get to on this topic of buying hays. How do you know what to pay for it if you don't test it, first of all?
I got to be careful. There's a lot of hay jockeys out there, though. You got to be careful what you're buying. There's a lot of people looking to move stuff that they can't move anywhere else, and they're looking for people that don't know enough to test, and then trying to unload stuff. Maybe Brad, and you as well, John David, can comment on testing hay and the importance of that as you're moving forward and trying to buy hay for an entire production.
John: I've been doing a lot of hay sampling lately. [unintelligible 00:11:42]. It only takes a little bit of sandwich bag full of hay is all you need, and what I use is I use a hay rope that goes down into the bale to the more to the center. I think the average is one sample, one out of every hundred bales, but we don't have that many sitting around there, so I actually do more than that.
I bought this one, and this is probably closer to you than it is to me. Actually, no, this gentleman donated me this star-quality sampler. They're actually a Canadian company, but I've been using this one. It's got a metal tip, and it's got the drill bit side is like an octagon there. That really helps versus some of these older ones I was using that has the round, and then the slip. Let me take the cover off of it. The teeth are obviously different too, so that works a little.
Getting a good hay sample will give you a good start, but you're looking for, obviously, nutrients. You're looking at that crude protein, you're looking at that TDN, now you get into dairies, you're looking to MDF, and a lot of other more nutrient levels too that beef guys might not take as seriously as dairies, because dairies, it's going to affect your amount of milk really quickly.
Most of my guys, the first two things they look at here is fruit, protein, and TDN. What you need to do is make sure you take the first cutting of the Smith Farm, if that's one sample, the second cutting of the Smith Farm will be a separate sample. The Jones first cutting will be a separate sample. Stack your hay, or you know where it's at, is the best thing, and then sample. Then you're going to get the [unintelligible 00:13:36] send it off. I think Skyview Labs is what our conservation uses. I like Dairy One. Dairy One's a really good lab, and I like to least have the 30-hour test for beef because that actually mimics how long it stays in the rumen of that animal.
If you do the short test, it's a cheaper equation, and you might be short-changing yourself. You're not going to get all the benefits of that nutrients in that hay. I like that, at least, the 30-hour test on that. When you get it, you look at the crude protein and TBN, and you're going to have to match that with your requirements. You can find-- There's probably 10 or 15 easy. You Google it, find the requirements. Alabama's got some, I know. I got three books up there from college that has a different, but they're pretty close. You're looking at the crude protein for beef guys, anyway.
As I say, dairy's going to get more in-depth really quickly, and you look at the TDN, and that's the levels, and where they're at in their gestational cycle, are their growth. If you're in a low gestational cycle, the mid-gestation, you get by with lower crude protein TDN. If you get in that last third trimester where a lot of calf development is happening at that time onto lactation and peak lactation, that is when you feed your best, your crude protein can jump from a, you need a 7.5 to an 8 to 10 to 11, you know how much milk you're making on that beat cap. You need to really keep that in mind in TDN. That's the good thing about a hay sample because you actually get the TDN.
That irritates me that you go to a feed store, buy a bag of feed, and you look at it, you won't find a TDN. I think it should be required. If anybody in regulation is listening to me right now, [laughter] push that. I would like to see TDN on a bag of feed because they can work down with corn and gluten really quickly and drop that TDN level and it's more economical for them but maybe a little less efficient for you, so I'd really like that that let you know exactly what you're working with. The TDN is your energy, Total Digestive Nutrients, that's your energy.
Most people supplement corn for that because it's really high and your protein. A lot of people go with soybean meal or gluten. It's all high in fruit protein, so that's a lot of large supplements. Knowing what you need to feed can tell you if you need to supplement or not. That's going to be, if you need a supplement and you don't, you're going to lose body conditions for us on your cattle, which you're not going to breed back as well. If you overfeed, yes, okay, you might stay the body conditions for even go up, but you're wasting money where you could put it somewhere else, and it's easy for me to make a decision as an extension, I can tell you what to do.
As a producer and it's going to come down to money. How much money do you have to spend and where? You have to balance those out. As a producer, I understand that, and I've tried to do that as the extension. I have to give them options. The hay sample is worth the money you put into it.
Joe: Every time, and I agree with that. You touched on it briefly, but one of the big things that you have to worry about with hay is making sure you know where it is and that you have access to all your hay at all times because I always see guys that stack, they'll make their own hay, and they'll stack it back to front in the shed, and all of a sudden you're looking at, well you're feeding your best hay, you're feeding your late cuttings when you don't need that energy, you don't need that, that crude protein on the beef side. Then when you do need it, and you're in late gestation, early lactation on the beef side, you're feeding your first cutting, you're feeding your worst quality hay.
Being able to stack everything, put everything where you can get to it at all times, test it all so you know where you're at, and you can match that quality to where, like John David was saying, where you are in your gestation, and that's huge. I will advocate for that test every time. You should be testing everything, and it becomes even more important when you're buying all your hay.
Emily, do we have anything else we want to talk about? We might have to do another West Virginia, Minnesota episode at some point if you're willing to come back on.
Emily: Yes.
John: Yes. I've really enjoyed it, and they pick at me, I'm old school. You give me an overhead projector, one PowerPoint, and a hand or a visual aid, I can give you a three-hour lecture on it. I'm an old-school Extension, but try not to ramble too much and get-- It's hard to get all the points that you want to get in one session across because there's always 10,000 things to talk about.
Joe: I think that's where we're all at. It's good to see Extension is pretty much conserved across the country. Everyone's excited about their topic. Everyone gets really excited about wanting to educate and make sure that they do get those points out there and that they're hitting those high notes when we're talking to people. You're not alone. I think we're all in the same boat there. I know Bradley could talk for four or five hours, six hours at a time if you get him on the right topic and--
Bradley: Exactly. Watch out.
Joe: Emily, yes, we all know Emily can talk just fine.
Emily: Yes.
Joe: Yes.
Emily: John David, we'll have to have you back, and you can tell us about your adventures in nut judging, which is probably my favorite thing that you did.
John: Oh, yes.
Bradley: We haven't talked about a judging episode. That'd be cool.
Joe: We could do a judging episode, and you guys are going to have to run it because I know nothing. I know absolutely zero.
Emily: Neither do I.
John: I was a judge this morning. We had the first festival today at the next-
Emily: Oh, you did this morning.
John: I did it this morning, and I was the nut judge.
Emily: Isn't it funny how you find those little niches in Extension you never thought you'd have? Like, "I'm the walnut judge guy." I don't know. Sure.
Joe: Yes. It's definitely part of the job. I think it's what keeps us from getting too bored. We all get these little offshoots that we get thrown into, and it ends up being a really good time. All right, let's wrap it there. This might get split into two episodes. I don't know. We've been recording for a while, but we'll--
Emily: Yes, this was a meaty beast here.
Joe: We'll either split it into two or do one big long episode. We'll for sure have John David back. Thank you for being on. If you have questions, comments, scathing rebuttals, please send them to themooseroom@umn.edu.
Emily: That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-E-R-O-O-M@umn.edu.
Joe: Please check out our website extension.umn.edu. If you have other questions you want to learn about the other things that we're talking about, head over to the West Virginia Extension website, they've got a ton of resources on there. You can read all about their bull fest and everything else they're doing. Check us out on Facebook @umnbeef and @umndairy. Thank you for listening, everybody. Thank you again to John David. We will catch you next week.
[music]
Emily: See you.
Joe: Bye.
Bradley: I tried to move my chair on carpet and I freaking fell out of it.
[music]
[cow mooing]
[00:21:07] [END OF AUDIO]
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