Tag Archives: hay stocks

Continued Drought Concerning for Northwest Georgia Livestock Producers

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Villanow, GA |

Here in Walker County, it’s hard to believe that things are better than they were just a couple of weeks ago, as they went almost three whole months with just a fraction of an inch of rain in what’s called an exceptional drought – the worst level there is and was even designated by the USDA as one of the eleven natural disaster counties in the region. It’s something that’s of course been a concern to most everyone, but to cattle producers like Brian Hart, the concern is very much still there.

“This year, our rainfall was perfectly normal until the last week of August and the last week of August it basically quit raining. This area has been in a drought for all of September, all of October, all of November and starting into December. We have had some rains the last part of November and some rains early December and rain forecasted this weekend, which is hopeful, but it’s just been a terribly, terribly dry time for those months and it affected our Fall grazing. We really didn’t know yet how it’s going to affect our hay crop next year,” says Brian Hart, Owner of Red Barn Farm.

As you can tell, most, if not all of the forage is long gone into dormancy, which has forced Brian to start feeding hay early this year.

“We typically graze our fescue pastures up until mid-November, early December with good rain and we don’t put up that much hay, but our hay consumption this year has been extremely high since really about the middle of September because there has been no grass, as you could see from looking in the fields there. It’s just it’s really dried up. We do have some fields we haven’t grazed yet that look decent, but it’s certainly affected our hay consumption. We’ve probably fed an additional hundred rolls of hay already this year that we normally do not feed,” says Hart.

Of course having to start feeding hay earlier than expected has caused his hay stocks to be depleted much faster than normal, which has caused him to have to purchase more hay to make sure they have enough to last them through the Winter.

“We’ve actually purchased some hay just to make sure we have enough. I think we have enough. A lot of it depends on what the grass does when it does start raining, because that’s what nobody knows. If it starts raining normally in December, we don’t know what the grass is going to do behind that rain, so we have bought an additional 150 rolls of hay that we’re going to feed if needed,” says Hart.

One thing that’s concerning to Hart is the long-term effect on his herd, as he relies on Winter grazing to help maintain his cattle’s weight, but without it, he’s afraid they may come up short when it’s time to sell.

“In the calf business like we’re in, we typically wean off 650-700 pound calves every spring along the May or June time frame. We don’t know what those weights are going to be because of the shortage of grass. Now we’ve got plenty of hay to feed them, but they’ll gain a lot better if they had some grass to go with it so that’s another way that it very easily could affect us,” says Hart.

Drought conditions have lessened in the last couple of weeks, but most of the Northwest Georgia area remains in severe drought conditions and it’s unclear when those conditions will ease up.

By: John Holcomb

Hay Stocks/State Forages Struggling

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Tifton, GA

Spring has officially sprung here in Georgia which means hay fields and pastures across the state will be starting to flourish – signaling a new production year for forage producers. It’s no doubt a sight they’re excited to see after battling record high inflation and mother nature this past year that took a toll on their fields.

“Before that unseasonable cold that we had, we were already kind of ten steps behind in terms of forage production in the state,” says Lisa Baxter, State Forage Extension Specialist with UGA. “When you think about fertilizer prices, chemical prices, any input that we have was up. And so, producers cut a lot of those inputs, which slowed down our forage production. You add to that every weather challenge we seemed to have last summer. We went from too hot to too cold, too wet, too dry. We never settled in an optimum and so it was really unfortunate then when we hit last fall, a lot of producers were slow getting their winter annuals in the ground because we physically could not get the drills to go in the ground because it was so dry.”

However, according to Baxter, the difficulties last season brought is just the tip of the iceberg, as she says the state has had back-to-back difficult seasons that have caused many issues for forage producers in the state, which in turn, has even resulted in a hay shortage, as hay stocks have decreased by more than thirty percent.

“I would say our hay shortage overall started back in 2021,” says Baxter. “It was above average rainfall that year. And yes, the grass needs the moisture to grow, but we hit the point where we’re getting too much moisture and cause a lot of disease issues that we can’t control feasibly in grasses, but then we also can’t get things harvested in a timely manner. So, not only are we getting fewer harvests across the year, we’re getting lower quality harvests as well. So, you kind of catapult that into our winter forage season where fertilizer prices were starting to increase, people aren’t fertilizing their winter annuals as much. We’re relying more and more on those hay stores. Problem is, then we’ve used up anything that we had in reserve. It’s gone. We used to say, ‘ah, you just had those thirty bales in the back of the farm for that rainy day.’ We had that rainy day. It’s done.”

As producers head into this year’s production season, Baxter believes the best way forward is for producers to prioritize the fields they’d like to focus on, as input costs are still high which once again will mean thinner profit margins.

“As we start moving forward into our next production season, we need to take a good, almost survey of what forage resources we have and start making a priority list. The reality is prices aren’t going to come down immediately, and so we need to protect the most acreage we can. If we know that we’ve had low forage production across the entire farm, now’s the time to pick and choose which of these fields needs the most priority. Which ones can we kind of bring back? Which ones do we need to push to the side and say, ‘when the situation improves and weather is more in our favor, we’ll renovate these later.’ So, that’s the big thing right now is that if nothing’s really regrowing, it’s the time to plan and just reflect on what our forage production been and what can feasibly be done going forward,” says Baxter.

Baxter encourages producers to reach out to their county agents if they have questions or need assistance.

By: John Holcomb