Hayguy said:
t changed to make you try corn again,last time we "talked" you weren't too high on it Been really dry here as well,with several frosty nights setting the alfalfa back. predicting some showers for this next week,sure hope to get under one.
Still not that pleased. I thought it might be worth testing a corn on corn rotation after touring several neighbourhood operations. Apparently the fertilizer requirement goes down over time and organic matter in your soil goes up, etc. And being such a great farmer (sarcasm) I thought perhaps I had done it wrong before.
So far results from one year in and second year planted...
I am not sure I believe any of the math I hear anymore about costs being $0.75 per day. Our costs were around $1.75 per cow day counting labour, seed, spray, fertilizer, etc. for year 1. Based on conversations I pulled as many cow days per acre as my neighbours that are good farmers so I assume I did it properly.
My plan for year 2 corn on corn...
Soil tests showed the same organic matter in the stuff we had swath grazed for 15 years as the corn from last year. Fertilizer requirement for N based on the same crop recommendation - 184 lbs of N where the corn was, 123 where we swath grazed (and hadn't fertilized before...)
On the good side, I like that corn is a C4 and breaks up the plant cycle of swath grazing, I like how much phosphorous it uses as our swath grazing land gets pretty high P, I like the weed control for moving to other things (like seeding grass after), I liked how the cows gained condition. On the down side, the timing for our operation is terrible. We were cultivating in May and seeding mid May. I am still grazing cows on volunteer barley where we swath grazed and with our current dry situation, every day there buys me two to three days more grass later in the year. Total grazing days per acre on swath grazing (counting spring grazing) is more than the corn this year.
If I get 300+ days per acre this year, I may try it again but it is not looking good.
Current ideas include trying to pull 3 cereal crops every two years and doing some seeding of swath grazing directly into early season, high density grazed grass stands and then letting the grass come back afterwards.
Sorry for stealing the weather post...Hayguy set me off. :shock: