Heat, Humidity, and Hay

The past few days have left no doubt that it is indeed summertime in the Deep South.  The highs have been in the upper 90's with heat indexes touching 110, and evening/early morning "lows" have been in the mid-70's with air so thick you could cut it with a knife.  Our milking cows are spending most of the daylight hours trying to escape the misery by taking refuge in our barns, but even the fans and sprinklers can't keep their appetite and milk production from slipping in this kind of weather.  This is not a new problem though...summertime is always tough on the cows and some weeks (like this one) are a little worse than others.

raking bermudagrass hay

The hot weather hasn't been too bad for our crops, though. Our corn, sorghum, and bermudagrass all grow well in the heat as long as we have adequate rainfall. After a dry May and first half of June, we've been getting a little rain each week so our crops are looking pretty good. In fact, our rain chances lately have been high enough to keep us out of the hayfield until this weekend. After cutting half of our hay acreage this weekend, we baled 23 acres today and will do another 10 tomorrow.  The current rain forecast looks like we won't cut the rest until first of next week, and we'd be happy to wait until then if we knew we could get an inch or two of rainfall between now and then.