GordoSD

Well-known Member
Spent a few hours with the SH and a 9 ft IH 1100 mower Saturday cleaning up fence lines, around food plots and some yard areas. Baled it Last evening and delivered 200 bales to the local feed store this morning. Junk hay, canary, blue stem, foxtail, and a couple cornstalks where I got into the corn, no more than 40 lbs. Dry hay won't pack down.. Funny to see a hay bale with half an ear of corn showing. Store called at 5pm and said he had sold them all at $3.50. Told him to send me a 350 dollar check. I was going to burn it or make a deer hunting tower out of it. :)
 
Good for you. It's not easy selling "good" hay, let alone road ditch hay. Do you live close to an urban area? In my area of central Missouri, everyone either has lots of hay (and you can't sell a single bale) or everyone has none, including me. Often times when I've actually been able to sell hay, I"ve thought of getting rid of the cattle and just concentrating on hay sales. It's pretty hard to have cattle and sell hay also. Maybe I should get rid of "half" the cattle??
 
Went to the elevator this am and got 10-40-60 mix for the alfalfa field. To put on 150 lbs cost $50 per acre. Takes awhile for that potash and phospho to get down to root level. Some fall rains and 50 inches of snow should do it.
 
to some people that junk hay might be pretty good. I have far more customers that want grass hay instead of alfalfa. But this is missouri too.
 
Wow, no wonder alfalfa is profitable for you. Here in my area of Missouri, our soils are not naturally high in phosphorus and potassium...as yours obviously are. We "routinely" have to apply an analysis of 0-15-50 "per ton" of removal ! A typical full year application would be somewhere around 0-60-260 plus 1 pound of boron per acre per year. Put some cost numbers to that and see what it costs!

Gordo....just out of curiousity, why do you add the nitrogen?
 
I'll see what the soil samples produce after the snow is gone. I might try a little higher ratings.. But I am grossing about 850 per acre now on a really nice weed seed free feed dairy quality alfalfa.
A few weevils showed up a week ago. Will the snow and ice kill them all this winter.
 
ARe you sure they are weevils? 'Pretty uncommon for them to show up this time of year. In fact, I've never heard of them this time of year....but then again, I'm not familiar with your northern situations either.

Your base fertilizer ingredients make sense now. THere has been some research done that in fact does support the addition of up to 18 pounds of nitrogen in the spring. I personally don't think it's all inclusive so I haven't followed suit.
 

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