An update on our cows & crops

Here's a quick farm update for you to enjoy on this 4th of July Weekend.

Cows: A few dry cows are finally starting to calve, but we have still been drying off milking cows at a faster rate.  We currently have 163 cows in the milking herd, the lowest number we've had in quite a while. The dry-off to freshen ratio should be nearly dead even for the next six weeks, so where we are is probably where we'll be for a while.

Corn: I made the last sprayer pass through the cornfield a week ago, so we shouldn't need a tractor back in the creek bottom until it's time to harvest. I checked it yesterday and it's looking really good. The corn itself looks healthy (and is growing fast), and their doesn't appear to be much weed pressure.  A few more good rains over the next couple of months will go a long way in making it a great silage crop this year.

Sorghum: I've spent most of this week spraying and planting sorghum fields, and I've only got 24 acres left to plant. Even though this crop is being planted a couple of weeks later than what I had hoped for, it's still a week earlier than our last sorghum crop in 2009. We had a good yield that year, but lots of September rain made it very difficult to get equipment in the field when it was time to harvest.

Hay: After we fertilized our bermudagrass in early May, it stopped raining. No rain = no growth. We have received a fair amount of rain over the last two weeks, though, and the bermudagrass has finally responded. If the weather forecast allows for it, we'll probably try to harvest 35 acres next week. We'll need really good growing conditions over the next couple of months to be able to make up for our slow start, but thankfully we'll go into the winter with some hay carried over from last year.

For your viewing pleasure, there's a new GDF MooTube Minute below that talks about some of what I've blogged about above. God Bless America and I hope you all have a wonderful holiday weekend!