Flood Damaged Crops

The heavy rains and flooding over the weekend has caused significant damage to a number of crops. The level of damage is variable across the area, but if you had any flood water in crop fields you have some tough decisions to make. The photo at the right, taken after the 2006 flooding, reminds us of similar problems faced in the no so distant past.

First, we urge you to document damage to fields and crops by contacting the Farm Service Agency. You are strongly encouraged to take photos of damage. This information is critical in Federal Program decisions.

Next assess the extent of flood damage to fields and access roads that may need repair, and flood trash deposits that may need removal before harvest is possible.

Crop quality may also be impacted. Silt deposited on forage crops should be a concern for dairy and livestock farms. We have put a together a short fact sheet that will help you to make harvest decisions. Click here to open the PDF.

If you have damaged crops in Delaware County and have questions please give Paul or Dale a call at the Watershed Ag Program office, 865-7090, or Mariane a call at Cornell Cooperative Extension main office, 865-6531.

Delaware County Scissor Cut Results 5/17/11

The old timers always said, “a cold wet May, means a barn full of hay”. I guess I’m almost an old timer now, and I say a cold wet May is depressing.

Most farmers we talk to are itching to get started early this year to make high quality forage, and know that the rainy weather is making it harder to achieve this goal. Our data from this week unfortunately confirms this. All of the fields we sampled rapidly increased in NDF over the past week, and a number of fields were beginning to show heads.

Read our entire report and see the field by field results. Click Here

Scissor Cut results 5/10/2011

We are monitoring 48 hay fields in Delaware County for NDF content to predict optimum first cutting timing. Haying time is almost here.

Highlights of Week 2

• NDF has increased slowly in the past week, but observations indicate grass has begun stem elongation and fiber will increase rapidly in the next week
• This week’s tests suggest harvest should begin next week!. (right on the long term average)
• Corn planting and hay harvest will conflict on most farms this year. Make plans park the corn planter when hay is ready and complete harvest of core acres before finishing corn planting.

Click Here to see our full report and site by site results

Is 2011 the Year to Wide Swath?

Forage quality has never been more important than right now. With record feed prices, higher forage rations are not just desirable, they are the key to thriving in the dairy business.

Timely harvest is the most critical step in achieving forage quality. Check out my previous post and stay tuned to our scissor cut sample results to hit the optimum harvest window. The rainy weather this spring may have you worried, though. How will you squeeze in enough good days to get that great stuff in the silo? Wide swathing may be just what you need.

The graph above shows results from Tom Kilcer in 2010. With a full swath mowed at 9:00 am, hay was ready to chop by mid afternoon, with tedding right after mowing it was ready by 11:30. In 2004, a very wet May, we measured drying rates in very challenging drying conditions. Grass mowed into a wide swath dried about 1% point per hour, if tedded right after mowing it dried at 2% points per hour, in a windrow it did not dry at all.

If the weather is really challenging, or your mower won't make a swath of at least 90% of the cutter bar width, try tedding for silage harvest. It means another trip over the filed, but great quality hay in the silo may be priceless come next winter.

Wide swathing can turn a one day weather window into grass in th silo. If the present weather trend continues, one day windows may be all we get.

Wide swathing is still worth doing even if we have great weather. The rapid dry down saves sugars, yielding higher energy silages. Silage at the correct moisture has lower soluble protein, helping more forage fit in a ration.

2011 may just the right time to give wide swath haylage a try.

Dale Dewing

Scissor Cuts 5/3/11

We just finished our first week of Scissor Cut samples for 2011.

For as cold and wet as it has been, hay was taller and more advanced than we thought it might be. Fields were 2-4 inches shorter than the multi-year average, and very nearly the same in NDF.

Click Here for the full report.

Dale Dewing

EPA Exempts Milk from Oil Spill Regulations

New York Farm Bureau Released This 4/12/2011

NYFB has just received word that the Environmental Protection Agency has agreed to exempt dairy from the Oil Spill Prevention, Control and Countermeasure (SPCC) Program, which would have treated dairy products like oil because of the fat content and forced farmers to develop expensive and unnecessary oil spill plans for their milk.

“This is a huge victory for dairy farmers all throughout Upstate New York, one which has been a long time coming,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer, who strongly advocated against these regulations on behalf of dairy farmers. “Everyone knows that when Congress enacted these laws it was targeting massive oil spills and toxic substances, not an accident involving milk at one of our state’s small dairy farms. With this exemption, I can now ensure New York dairy farmers that they will no longer have to cry over spilled milk, let alone the costly preparation for it.”

Senator Gillibrand and Congressmen Gibson, Owens and Reed also supported farmers by asking EPA to exempt milk from the oil spill regulations and were co-sponsors of bills to do so.

While milk tanks and piping will now be exempt from the regulations, other oil and fuel tanks on a dairy may still be regulated under SPCC and farms should make sure they are in compliance. For more information, please see the October issue of Grassroots (page 4) or contact NYFB’s Kelly Young at kyoung@nyfb.org.

2011 Delaware County No Till School Presentations Available

The 2011 No till school was extremely well attended. The following videos are the presentations made that day by speakers Drs Quirine Ketterings and Russ Hahn of Cornell University; Paul Cerosaletti and Dale Dewing of Cornell Cooperative Extension of Delaware County and Kevin Ganoe, regional crop specialist with Cornell Cooperative Extension Central NY Dairy and Crop Crop Team. Topics for the day included:

Precision Nitrogen Management for Corn

Use of Aerators to Incorporate Manure in Minimum Till Systems


Weed Control updates for Corn and Small Grains


The Nitrogen Cycle


Why Soil pH Still Matters