The Official Farming Thread...

[jblnut]

Putting some miles on the road tractor hauling the last of the straw finally. The fields finally dried up enough we could retrieve the last of them.

 

[Wilhelm]

What remains of my runner duck flock of 8!
Left to right, 2 gentlemen & 1 dame.
It was a rough, hard, hot, bad summer so far!

 

[jakethesnake]

Merica!

 

[Bill G]

The beans are not looking good here at all. This was taken Friday.

 

[Lnk]

The beans are not looking good here at all. This was taken Friday.

View attachment 431094View attachment 431095

What do they even do with soy beans? How much soy sauce do we need? Or is it used for dog food or other animal feed?

 

[JimBear]

What do they even do with soy beans? How much soy sauce do we need? Or is it used for dog food or other animal feed?

Soybean meal is used in hog feed, some chicken & turkey feeds. Soy hulls are used as filler in cattle feed.

Soybeans are used to make bio diesel, which is horrible stuff in my opinion.

Then of coarse you have tofu, it’s made from soy milk.

 

[Bill G]

Typical crop rotation of corn/beans. These are double crop beans that followed wheat taken out at the end of June. There is no excuse in the poor quality as we have had plenty of rain. This will be the first time in my life I will not harvest a field that actually grew. I have had fields drowned out. One year I tried putting Millet into a neighbors field that had been drowned out and never harvested it because it never grew. We literally went the entire summer with no rain. This will be a first, a crop that grew but will not be harvested.

 

[Mastermind]

The way I feed doesn’t really lend me to making use of the added efficiency of colored cattle. I’ll see 61.5-62% yield outta these Holsteins and I can’t complain about that !!

Holstein makes a better tasting steak than Angus too.

 

[Bill G]

Soybean meal is used in hog feed, some chicken & turkey feeds. Soy hulls are used as filler in cattle feed.

Soybeans are used to make bio diesel, which is horrible stuff in my opinion.

Then of coarse you have tofu, it’s made from soy milk.

Exactly, good old soybean meal, the staple protein source of animal feeds especially as you said hog feed.

As for bio diesel I agree it is horrible in certain situations. I avoid it like the plague but others swear by it. For three generations our local elevator was privately owned by a family. They did a tremendous amount of trucking grain to the Mississippi and had a fleet of semis. In the ethanol boom a bio fuel company was running around buying up elevators. The rumor is they made an offer he could not refuse. His son and I went to school together from Kindergarten to graduation and I just assumed he and his sister would run it. I seen his daughter at an auction about 7 years ago and asked her why they sold. She smiled and said well Dad likes to farm and by gosh he sure has bought up land in the area. Now as for the bio fuel part. When the bio fuel company took over they started fueling their semis at the gas station up the blacktop. It was bio diesel. I guess they figured they went through it fast enough it would be fine. The station used to be locally owned by a family but now is owned by some foreigners so I do not know if they still fuel there.

Myself I got a real life lesson on bio diesel quite a few years ago. I am lucky it did not end worse than it did. We finished harvest and put the combine away as normal not knowing how the bio diesel would react. Of course it sat in the tank from late November until the next fall. Everything was fine when we got it out and got it ready. I ran for a while in the bottom field. Well about 10pm I was going to take it home. Now the shed is up on top of the Mississippi bluff hill and the road is long , winding and steep with ravines. I get about three quarters of the way up and the combine starts losing power like it is running out of fuel. I knew I had plenty of fuel but she just slowed and puked out. Of course being all hydro when the engine shuts down you have no brakes, no steering, no nothing. I get the wheel cranked as I start to roll back down the hill. Luckily I get it sideways in the hill up against a bank. That damn bio diesel had grown algae over the last 10 months or so and had the fuel filters plugged up with goo. That was the end of using bio diesel.

The comical thing is that was my second experience with a dead combine on that hill. Years before we had a old Massey 510. I was running low on fuel and it was basically the end of the day so I was quitting and running up the hill to fuel it for Dad the next day. Well l obviously underestimated how low it was. I made it about half way up the hill before she ran dry. Now since this was an old gear drive with hydraulic brakes I was able to gently let it roll back and crank it to the ditch. Dad was sitting at the bottom of the hill bullchitting with the neighbor when they heard the engine puke. They came up and the neighbor said "you should have seen the expression on your Dad's face when he heard it puke". I could not blame that on anyone but myself for pushing it to far.

Good memories. I miss the old guy. He did a lot cussing and yelling but we had a lot of chuckles too.

 

[jakethesnake]

Typical crop rotation of corn/beans. These are double crop beans that followed wheat taken out at the end of June. There is no excuse in the poor quality as we have had plenty of rain. This will be the first time in my life I will not harvest a field that actually grew. I have had fields drowned out. One year I tried putting Millet into a neighbors field that had been drowned out and never harvested it because it never grew. We literally went the entire summer with no rain. This will be a first, a crop that grew but will not be harvested.

Is it worth your time to cut it for hay

 

[Bill G]

Holstein makes a better tasting steak than Angus too.

Of course farming is totally up, down, and all around year to year, heck month to month but this past 18 months have been wild. This is not dairy country at all. I am not sure we even have a working dairy farm in the county anymore. My wife's uncle went belly up probably 20 years ago. There was one family that was running and gunning expanding. That ended about 2020 when it all got sold off. There is still one dairy up on the east side but it might be across the county line. About 10 years ago my brother put up a hoop and planned to buy and feed out about 200 dairy calves. That never happened. I fed out some but lost my shirt. I remember not that many years ago up in Wisconsin dairy country the price of calves was so miserable they were literally just shooting them like we did hogs in 1997 when they went to 7 cents. I heard one winter up there the calves would not even get a bid at the sale barn and they shot them. Well this past winter over on another site I was talking with a dairy farmer from northern New York. He told me about how nuts the price of dairy calves had gotten out there. It was crazy high. I phoned a buddy up in southern Wisconsin that milks cows and he confirmed how crazy they were. I never dreamed they would go that high.

 

[jblnut]

Holstein makes a better tasting steak than Angus too.

I agree. A holstein makes an amazing steak !! I'd take cull cow hamburger over steer burger though. It's a tad leaner and seems to fry better. Steer burger all the way for smashburgers or anything on the grill though

He told me about how nuts the price of dairy calves had gotten out there. It was crazy high. I phoned a buddy up in southern Wisconsin that milks cows and he confirmed how crazy they were. I never dreamed they would go that high.

I paid $3.35/lb for a group of 36 388lb feeders a month ago and $3.20/lb for a group of 30 376lb feeders last week. Week old calves are bringing $550-900. Absolutely bonkers !! For now there is still money to be made as the last group of steers I sold brought $1.84/lb weighing 1590lbs average. Not too shabby really.

 

[Mastermind]

We are fixin to ween our calves. We have 18 or 19 at 4 -5 weight.

 

[Bill G]

I agree. A holstein makes an amazing steak !! I'd take cull cow hamburger over steer burger though. It's a tad leaner and seems to fry better..........

Back in about 2011 when corn was going way up Dad wanted to give up some rented pasture, doze out the fences and farm it. I did not want to but he was bound and determined . The cows over there were getting old so they went to the sale barn. We hauled one load down the week before Christmas and planned the rest after the first. Well on Christmas Eve I was over there and saw the settlement sheet. I was livid. A bunch sold at around $150 PER HEAD. I pulled two old cows from the remaining ones and took them to the locker. They were ground into whole cow burger and divided up. My father in law also sold some burger at the machine shop.

 

[jakethesnake]

Hell bill. I don’t have much better here. I figure I’ve got a good month of growing season left though

 

[Only the Tony]

Dry here. Feeding a bale every other day already. I watched the rain go around me all summer it seems. Couple months ago a place 3 miles from mine got 4.5" to my .5"

 

[jakethesnake]

View attachment 431143
Dry here. Feeding a bale every other day already. I watched the rain go around me all summer it seems. Couple months ago a place 3 miles from mine got 4.5" to my .5"

Been that way here too. Hoping I’ve got a soy crop. Maybe a few corn fields will be ok. Irrigated corn doesn’t look like it should either.

 

[Only the Tony]

Been that way here too. Hoping I’ve got a soy crop. Maybe a few corn fields will be ok. Irrigated corn doesn’t look like it should either.

I've been doing a little cleaning out the ponds with the tractor in the morning for the last week or so. Just playing in the areas I can get to easier. I guess the dryness is good for that.

 

[JimBear]

I don’t know about the bean crops here but the rat population is apparently doing well.

Two on the grate at Poet in Brooks this morning, anybody’s guess how many already went thru.





I didn’t get a picture but there were 5 on the grate at Poet in Menlo this afternoon

 

[JimBear]

View attachment 431143
Dry here. Feeding a bale every other day already. I watched the rain go around me all summer it seems. Couple months ago a place 3 miles from mine got 4.5" to my .5"

How are you sitting with your hay ? Do you have plenty ?