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One more reminderBy Richard C. Snell Barton County Extension Agent--Agriculture I'm getting to the point that I have to be reminded of things and I know you are too. The old hard drive can only store so much information even with keen minds like yours and mine. Here's your reminder. The Golden Belt Residue Management Alliance will hold their summer-fall tour this Tuesday evening, Aug. 21. We will meet at 5 p.m. at the Co-op parking lot in Pawnee Rock. We will then car pool and finish the tour at historic Pawnee Rock with a meal. We will look at and hear about several dryland as well as irrigated fields. We will be looking at corn, sunflowers, soybeans and milo. We hope to have a couple of K-State speakers on hand. We hope you can attend. Call me at 620-793-1910 for more information. Hays fall field day Kansas State University will hold their annual Fall Field Day on Thursday, Aug. 23. It begins with coffee and doughnuts at 8:30 a.m. The field is located just off of the by-pass on the south edge of Hays. Some of the morning field stops will include: Advances in Grain Sorghum Weed Control; Impacts of Tillage Practices on Great Plains Soils; Comparing Rain-fed Grain Sorghum and Corn; and Corn, Sorghum and Sunflower Performance Tests. J.P. Michaud will talk on Cultural Control of Sunflower Insects back at the auditorium. This will be followed by lunch. After the free lunch, there will be two afternoon talks in the air-conditioned auditorium. The first one will be "The Future of Bioenergy and Wheat". The second one will be the "Status of the 2007 Farm Bill." The program will adjourn before 2:30 p.m. One more rain needed This has been a good summer for the most part in the Golden Belt area for fall crop production. We are in a critical stage however for dryland soybeans and perhaps the later planted dryland milo. We need at least one more rain to finish the crop out. The recent hot weather dried things out in a hurry. We had some large rains the first of August but generally August has been the classic dog days of heat and dry weather. It would appear that most of our dryland and irrigated crops are excellent this year. Until this past week, I would have said that as compared to an average year, the dryland crops would beat the irrigated. We had a lot of dryland corn and milo that looked like it could make 90 bushels plus and perhaps the most unbelievable for our area were the soybeans that looked like 50 bushels per acre. Notice I said we had because on the milo and beans, I'm not sure now. Hopefully by the end of August, we'll get another inch of rain. Did you know... --The southwest research center at Garden City will celebrate 100 years with a Centennial Fall Field Day on Tuesday, Aug. 30. The time is 7 a.m. until 3 p.m. There will be field tours and seminars featuring livestock, as well as dryland and irrigated crops and soils research. Call me for rides. --KLA-KSU Ranch Field Days will be held Aug. 21 near Augusta and Aug. 23 near Oskaloosa. --The south central field day, based out of the Hutchinson Experiment Field, will be Aug. 28 this year but will be near Haven, at an off station soybean trial. --The evening horticulture tour at the Hays Research Station will be on Aug. 29 at 6:30 p.m. --The horticulture tour at the Colby Research facility will be Aug. 23. --The irrigated field day at K-State's Scandia Field will be Aug. 21. Horse hay, blister beetle alert I'd like to repeat a story I did several years ago on blister beetles. This is an alert to alfalfa producers since this is the time of year the tend to be present. A fellow county agent sent me a note about something that happened to a farmer in his county. An alfalfa grower sold a truckload of alfalfa to a trucker with the verbal understanding that it was not to be sold for horses. The farmer had never even seen a blister beetle, but had read enough about them to know their threat. The trucker subsequently sold the load to another trucker who sold it to a horse farm on the east coast. Four horses died reportedly from blister beetles (confirmed by university vets). The horse owner filed suit against the farmer for a large sum of money for selling contaminated hay. Even though it doesn't make sense to an old country boy, it appears the farmer is vulnerable. His insurance company--a leading one--said they would pay for and provide for his defense, but if there is a judgment against him, they will not cover that. How the horse owner is going to "prove" the beetles were in this particular lot of hay is uncertain. Although, it seems to me that the responsibility should be for the horse owner to know the exact source of his hay and who grew it before he feeds it, the moral of the story is to draw up a short form that the trucker or buyer signs and that the grower signs agreeing that there is no guarantee that it is blister beetle free or that it is not horse hay. I know a lot of our alfalfa growers won't sell hay as "horse hay" even though it commands a big dollar price just for the above reason. Date: 8/16/07
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