Sincerely,

Brandon Sears

County Extension Agent for Agriculture & Natural Resources 859-623-4072 or brandon.sears@uky.edu

Tuesday April 2nd, 9 am to 12 noon Madison County Extension Office, 230 Duncannon Lane, Richmond, KY

*Tentative agenda*

9:00 - Overview of the Industrial Hemp Program in Ky – David Williams UK Plant and Soil Science Department and RCARS Director

9:30 – 2019 Outlook and Application Process for 2020 – Doris Hamilton KDA Program Manager for Hemp Production

10:00 - Agronomic Considerations for Hemp Production – Tom Keene UK Agronomy Specialist

11:00 - Economic Projections/Factors for Raising Industrial Hemp - Tyler Mark or Jonathan Shepherd UK Agricultural Economics

We will participate, by video conference, in a live meeting occurring at the Fayette Co Extension Office.

Lunch will not be served but please call us if you plan to attend so we can prepare handouts. This is the only Extension hemp meeting offered in Madison County at this time.

Thursday, March 28 from 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm at the Madison County Extension Office Dr. Paul Vincelli, a University of Kentucky Plant Pathologist, will discuss the scientific aspects of risks and benefits of GMO crops. Dr. Vincelli will break down the fact and fiction concerning the use of GMOs in agriculture in the USA and in developing countries. Some of what he presents may surprise you! Dr. Vincelli welcomes questions and comments throughout his discussions. Please call 859-623-4072 to register.

Join us on March 6th, 7:00 pm, at the Madison County Extension Office (230 Duncannon Lane, Richmond, KY) for a closer look at Bull Management and Reproduction, presented by Dr. Phil Prater DVM, Professor of Veterinary Technology and Ag Sciences, Morehead State University.

We are not in a position to offer a meal at this meeting, but please call 859-623-4072, if you plan to attend so we can prepare materials and seating.

*This meeting qualifies for 2019 CAIP education credits*

Thursday, March 21st from 6:00 to 7:30 pm at the Madison County Extension Office For the past fifteen years, the UK Turfgrass and Ornamental Entomology Lab has included research efforts into the field of Urban Pollinators. This is a summary of several research projects:

Challenges to bees in the urban setting - Why are bee populations declining?

Pollinators and pesticides and we can we do Best urban trees and shrubs for bees Monarch butterflies and waystations Types of milkweeds and pollinator garden design

Speakers: Adam Baker has BS degree from UK in Entomology and is currently a PhD student in the UK Turfgrass and Ornamental Lab. Adam has won several research and presentation awards.

Dr. Carl Redmond is lab manager for UK Turfgrass and Ornamental Lab, with over 30 years research experience with UK. He is a longtime resident of Madison County and local goat farmer. Call to register 859-623-4072.

The Madison/Estill County Farm Service Agency reminds producers to report damages from recent high rainfall/flooding to the FSA office.

These losses include damages to farm buildings, fences, crops, as well as livestock lost. Contact the Madison/Estill County Farm Service Agency office at (859) 624-1980, extension 2.

Please Read! If you received this newsletter in the mail and wish to be removed from our newsletter mailing list, or if you find an error on the mailing label, please contact the Madison County Extension Center at 859-623-4072. Thank You!

Berea Farmers’ Market: Located at Methodist Church Annex at 101 Fee Street in Berea, on Saturdays from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm. ***New vendors meeting, Saturday, March 9 at 1:30 to 2:30 pm at the above location. https://www.bereafarmersmarket.org/*** Also check Facebook.

Madison County Farmers’ Market: Open on Saturdays at the Richmond Mall (830 Eastern Bypass, Richmond) from 9 am to 1 pm. ***Vendor meeting on Tuesday, February 26th at 6:30 pm at the Madison County Extension Office. https://madisonkyfarmersmarket.com/*** Also check Facebook.

Whether it’s spring, summer, fall or winter, you can Plate It Up with delicious recipes that put a new twist on your favorite Kentucky Proud foods. Visit http://fcs-hes.ca.uky.edu/piukp-recipes to find all the Plate It Up recipes using Kentucky Proud products.

Monday, March 25th, 6:00 to 8:00 pm, at the Madison County Extension Office For more information call Kent at 859-623-3576 or Paul at 859-582-6172.

Madison County Cooperative Extension Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/Madison-County-Extension-Office-257784310635/

Madison County Cooperative Extension Service Ag Webpage: https://madison.ca.uky.edu/content/ag-natural-resources

Due to renovation/construction at our Princeton Kentucky soil lab, the Lexington lab that we send our soil samples to will experience increased activity. As a result, soil sample analysis this spring will take longer than normal. Make plans to submit your soil samples as soon as possible! We are anticipating potentially significant delays.

Madison County Cooperative Extension Service continues to offer free soil testing year round. We need at least two cups of dry soil to run each test. If you have question on how to collect your samples, please call 859-623-4072.

Agricultural and horticultural samples from Madison County residents will be accepted. There is a 10 sample limit per farm or home per calendar year! (Please note: Commercial lawn care companies submitting samples do not qualify for free soil testing; call 859-623-4072 for pricing.) We would like to thank our sponsors for making this possible:

Three “Private Farm Pesticide Applicator Certification” meetings are planned. If you apply restricted-use pesticides on your farm you need this certification. Sessions will be offered at the Madison County Extension Office, 230 Duncannon Lane, Richmond, the following dates. Choose to attend 1 session only!

● Tuesday, March 12th: 6:00 pm ● Friday, March 15th: 12 noon ● Wednesday, March 20th: 6:00 p.m.

Attend any one session to be certified to use restricted-use pesticides on your farm. There is no cost. Certification is good for 3 years. If you don’t use, or plan to use your present card, you don’t need to re-certify. Questions? Call 859-623-4072.

Dr. Jimmy Henning, UK Extension Forage Specialist

I have been mentally debating how to address the subject of pasture renovation for weeks. Normally, we reserve ‘renovation’ for the addition of clover to grass pastures. But in 2019, renovate is going to have to include the grass base too. Maybe we should call it pasture rehabilitation.

You know what I am talking about. What normally is an acre or two of torn up ground is turning into four or more. Whole hillsides have no green left.

Granted, some ground is going to get torn up every year. The cows have to be somewhere. Mud is price of feeding cattle outside over winter. So what can be done to renovate or rehabilitate damaged grass pastures? First, let’s agree that there is no easy or quick fix. The damaged pastures are going to need time out of production and some inputs. Let’s take a look at some things you can do to help rehabilitate your pasture grass base.

Rest. I would have to put this at the top of any list. Without time off, the pasture will never be much more

than mud and weeds. Ideally, this rest would extend beyond the rehabilitation period to future management. If these pastures have to go back into rotation, make it a priority to implement rotational grazing with extended rest periods. Longer rest periods allow the roots to recover as well as the tops. Feeding somewhere else. Getting to state the obvious is a perk of old age, and feeding somewhere else is the pinnacle of obvious. However, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is a symptom of insanity by some. So? Are there other options? To paraphrase Albert Einstein, we can’t solve our pasture management problems with the same practices we used when we created them.

Nitrogen. The strongest stimulant for grass growth is nitrogen. While legumes do supply nitrogen, for this

problem we need to pull out the big guns and use fertilizer N for quickest results. Spring N will stimulate grass plants that are still vigorous and growing and will produce more yield per pound of N than at any other time, generally.

Assess whether you have enough grass to warrant the N. Weeds are also stimulated by spring N, and we don’t need more of those. Fall applied N will stimulate cool season grasses to initiate new tillers that will emerge next spring. The timing window for N application to stimulate tillering is wider and later than the optimum window for stockpiling fescue. October and November applications will be effective.

Planting Something. Once the cattle have been removed, you have the opportunity to smooth up the

area if needed and seed. The options include red and white clover, a summer annual or even an aggressive establishing cool season grass if done early. Clover will easily germinate and grow when broadcast onto bare soil given just a little rain or packing. The taproots can help loosen the soil as well.

My choice of the ryegrasses would be perennial and not annual. Perennial is still a temporary fix but has a chance of lasting well into the season and maybe more. Annual ryegrass will seed out and die by mid-summer usually.

Summer annuals like crabgrass, sorghum sudans and pearl millet can provide high yields and make good use of the residual N, P and K from the cattle. Plant these when soils are warmer and the chance of frost has passed. All the options above (clover, ryegrass or warm season annuals) are just temporary solutions, of course. Their purpose is to provide some pasture while bridging to the fall seeding window when seeding of more permanent cool season grasses are more successful. Continued next page...

Continued from previous page...

There are as many ways to rehabilitate our permanent pastures as there are farms. Adding heavy use areas, unrolling hay across more area, and even bale grazing can help. But rest, nitrogen, feeding elsewhere and replanting are some of your most powerful tools for the job of bringing back the permanence in your pastures. A point of clarification, about ryegrasses. It is true that we could use annual and perennial ryegrasses. All ryegrasses (and there are several) have exceptional seedling vigor. Their advantage is they are the only forage grass species that can be expected to germinate and grow when seed is broadcast on top of the ground in late March or early April on torn up, muddy fields. The seed does have to stay wet to germinate. Even these grasses will do better if you have the chance to drag after seeding to cover the seed, if only partially.

Some annual ryegrasses (known as Westerwold ryegrasses) do not require vernalization (cold exposure) to make a seedhead. Marshall is an example of a Westerwold ryegrass. These ryegrasses can be seeded in the early spring but growth is usually limited to one flush of growth, ending in early summer. A summer annual could follow and produce a couple of cuttings or grazings before a seeding window opens for a permanent planting (fall for cool season grasses).

The confusing issue is that a sub-type (my term) of annual ryegrass known as ‘Italian’ ryegrass can also be spring seeded but will not produce a seedhead during the growing season. The reason it will not put up the seedhead is that they require vernalization (exposure to cold temps and short days of winter) to make a seedhead. Therefore Italian ryegrasses can remain vegetative all season making them easy to manage for high quality. How long they last into the season depends on the summer. A good listing of Westerwold versus Italian ryegrasses can be found in the 2018 Annual and Perennial Ryegrass and Festulolium report (Google ‘PR748 UKY’ then see Table 15).

Some producers will mix annual (either type) and perennial ryegrass for reparative seedings. Perennial ryegrasses, spring seeded, will be vegetative all season and have a chance to overwinter and provide growth into the second summer.

Small grains can be spring seeded and produce good to excellent yields. However, these will need to be drilled or worked into a prepared seedbed for acceptable stands and yields. The UK 2018 Annual Grass Report summarizes yield results of spring seedings of small grains from 2015-18 (Google ‘PR753 UKY’). Spring oats consistently outperformed spring triticale, cereal rye, spring wheat, winter wheat and ryegrass in these years. When seeded by mid-March, spring oats produced two cuttings and as much as 4.0 tons of dry matter per acre by mid-summer (Robust, 2017, PR-753).

To summarize, if land preparation just can’t be done, the ryegrasses have the best chance of providing ground cover and high quality grazing, even though yields may be limited. Italian ryegrasses will stay vegetative and the perennial ryegrasses can provide a second season of growth, depending on the site and weather (ryegrasses do not tolerate hot, dry summers well). When land preparation and seed incorporation is possible, spring oats will provide the most yield and as many as two cuttings by mid-summer, more than other small grain and ryegrass.

Publication of the Month: Renovating Hay and Pasture Fields (AGR-26)

Renovate means to renew and improve. This publication discusses managing a pasture or hay field that has become less productive and renovating or “renewing” it so that it will become more productive. In Kentucky, this usually means adding lime and fertilizer, controlling weeds, and planting an adapted legume such as red clover and/or ladino white clover. The primary benefits of renovation come as a result of getting legumes established in grass-dominated fields. See the full publication http://forages.ca.uky.edu/files/agr26.pdf

Dr. Jimmy Henning, from Forage Doctor Column originally published in Farmer’s Pride

The sun will come out……at least I hope so. Our Kentucky Forage and Grassland Council board met recently, and they challenged all of us in forage leadership to get as specific as possible about what producers should do about mud. What follows is a synthesis of thoughts about the path forward after what amounts to two years of incredibly wet winter weather.

Henry Ford said ‘Obstacles are those frightful things we see when we take our eyes off the goal. With that in mind, I am going to challenge us all to think beyond the short term problem of a pugged up field to the ultimate goal to be accomplished. We need to get a thick stand of grazing and traffic tolerant grass on these areas before going into the next winter feeding period.

So instead of thinking now about the next 60 days, let’s start with ways to get a thick stand of grass by fall of 2019. To do that, we need to have the damaged field in shape to seed to permanent cover by mid-August. I said ready to seed. Lord only knows what the summer will bring, assuming we get one.

In terms of the type of grass to seed, I think the only hope for holding these feeding area fields together is tall fescue. The choice between a novel tall fescue variety or ordinary KY 31 is perplexing, even for me. The novel fescues are clearly tough, and this is clearly an opportunity to upgrade a field.

No till seeding will help preserve the soil structure that you build with interim forages (or weeds unfortunately) next summer. You will want to use seeding rates on the high side of the range (25 lb per acre or more) and you will want to drill in two directions with a half rate each time. Realistically, this strategy will only provide about 6 to 8 inches of growth going into fall, but it is permanent cover.

What you do just prior to the fall seeding window is flexible, much of it driven by when you can get animals off the damaged field, your need for forage from that field and how much smoothing that field needs. I am sure that you are thinking, “I’d get them off of there tomorrow if I had any other options.” That said, let’s say the best case scenario is you get access to the field on April 1. We routinely spring seed red clover in April and get 2 tons of dry matter and more. You are going to have to smooth up the field in order to get good seed-soil contact.

Red clover will not provide any hoof support but it is easily managed so fall seedings of grass are possible. We are putting out some demonstrations using a mix of crabgrass and red clover as well. Based on our goal of permanent grass cover, manage the vegetation present so the grass seeding has the advantage; that means you may want to use a non-selective herbicide to prepare for a fall seeding.

Summer annuals (sorghum-sudangrass, sudangrass, pearl millet) give us more time to get the ground smoothed, as they are usually seeded beginning in early May depending on soil temperature. These grasses have the advantage of providing high yields as well as utilizing the fertility provided from the manure and urine in hay feeding areas. Indications are that seed supplies of these products will be tight because of poor harvest conditions last year. So if that is your plan, book your seed early. Consult AGR-229, Warm Season Annual Grasses in Kentucky (Google AGR-229 UKY, or call the office 859-623-4072 for a hard copy) to see which one is right for you.

Finally, it is still conceivable that ryegrass (planted right away) can provide some quick cover, and spring oats can actually yield 2 tons plus if planted my mid-March. The likelihood of getting a seeding window in the next two weeks is dwindling, but the option is there.

Summarizing all of this, our goal is a good stand of permanent cover on our winter feeding areas. Everything we do has to work towards that goal. Got ideas: Contact me at jimmy.henning@uky.edu. I would love to hear your thoughts, comments and questions.

*For forage seeding dates and rates, consult UK Extension publication AGR-18. (Google AGR-18 or call 859-623-4072 to request a hard copy.)* Happy foraging.

Dr. Kenny Burdine, Livestock Marketing Specialist, University of Kentucky

Ordinarily, I would use my February article to discuss the USDA cattle inventory report that typically comes out in late January or early February. However, due to the shutdown, that report is scheduled to come out at the end of the month, so we can have that discussion in March. With beef cow slaughter at such high levels, I do think we are starting to see early signs of beef cow herd growth slowing. But, I still look for a slight increase in beef cow numbers when the estimate comes out. In reality, anything between no change and a 1% increase would not surprise me.

Calf markets really haven’t moved since December. A 550 lb steer remains in the low-mid $140’s, as can be seen in Figure 1. January 2019 prices were roughly $11 per cwt below 2018 levels. Note that February just includes one week of prices, but I did choose to include it in the chart. I still feel that this calf market can rally significantly, probably $20 per cwt, between now and spring grass. Cull cow markets also continue to struggle and I do think weather is a major reason due to stress and condition. Market reporters are indicating that a larger-than-usual share of cows are falling outside or normal grades that are reported. This means that a lot of producers are receiving prices for cull cows below what I typically report as a state average.

Figure 1. 550# Medium & Large Frame #1-2 Steers KY Auction Prices ($ per cwt)

Source: USDA-AMS, Livestock Marketing Information Center, Author Calculations

It has been a while since we discussed cattle on feed numbers, so I thought it might be worth revisiting that for just a bit. In January 2018, cattle on feed numbers were 8% above year ago levels. Much of that was due to the larger 2017 calf crop and early placements of cattle due to poor wheat grazing conditions last winter. By the end of 2018, total on feed inventory was roughly 2% above year-ago levels. This is about what I would have expected given the size of our last calf crop. Put simply, current on feed numbers are probably a lot more representative of current conditions. Beef production will increase for 2019, but by a smaller percentage than we have seen in several years.

Printing and mailing costs are rising, so we are offering an opportunity for you to receive your newsletter via email. You can receive your Plowing Ahead newsletter simply by sending me an email with your request to brandon.sears@uky.edu, or just give our office a call, 859-623-4072, and ask to be switched to email delivery.