Hay

[Phred]

Guys,

Any one have a good hay crop this year?

I bet the dry weather has really hurt alot of folks.

Phred

[Buckeye]

My father-in-law had a great crop of timothy this year. Although we are technically very dry in my area, the pop-up thunderstorms just seem to hit his farm this year. 5-6 miles away and most people did not have it as good.

[Phred]

Jim,

I am glad to hear it was a good year.

I wish I had bailed mine. We had enough water in this area and I think other areas are hard hit so the price this year is probably pretty good.

Fred

This has been my best year ever. I will be putting up my fifth cutting today and will get five cuttings on my other fields as well. Couldn't have asked for a better year around here.

[Phred]

doc,

Is that mostly alfalfa?

I started to put mine up this year but I have only had the place about two years and its still awful weedy. Better than before but I did not think it was quite ready this year. Turns out we have had above average rain and I could have had a lot of round bales! [img]/forums/images/icons/frown.gif[/img]
Most of my fields are a fescue and sericea lespedeza mix.
This seems to work pretty well since the fescue does very well in the spring and fall and the lespedeza loves the hot dry summer. Also this should reduce the amount nitrogen needed.
Not great horse feed by large round bales of this stuff should be good for cattle.

Fred

[Hayseed]

Phred,

Seems I read somewhere that some types of lespadeza will attract turkeys, quail and doves. If I remember right it will make a bush with pods with one seed per pod if you let it grow. Am I remembering correctly? Does the type of lespadeza that you grow attract game birds? Do you have turkeys in your part of Arkansas?

[Phred]

Hayseed,

Here is a photo:
http://www.psu.missouri.edu/fishel/s..._lespedeza.htm

Many people consider this a noxious weed and spend lots of time and money trying to kill it. However, I have found that cows will eat it and since my soil is pretty low quality in places it is usefull since it does not mind all the rocks and low fertility. If nothing else it keeps errosion to a minimum. I will slowly phase it out through cutting and competition from white clover and the fescue.

As far as the turkeys go I have not seen or heard any. More white tail than I can count but no turkeys. We do have lots of road runners thought,


Kind of supprising since the ozarks remind me a lot of the mountians of south western Virginia where I use to live. And then you have these things that are suppose to live in the desert. Go figure. I bieleve we are the far eastern extent of their range.

Fred

[Hayseed]

Lespedeza looks like a weed to me!

It's funny you should mention roadrunners. I posted a queston about roadrunners in the TBN forums a while back. I asked who had seen them outside of desert areas and got a few responses back from northeast Tx. and Okla. I saw one a couple of months ago on a highway in far north central La. and it made me curious as to how far they ranged outside the desert southwest. That was the third time I had seen one in my life, the other two times being when I was a kid in south Ark. I thought it was unusual to see them there and now you say they are in the Ozarks, too! Wow! I had no idea...

[IndianaPaul]

Section of southwest Indiana I am in will be lucky to get a 2nd cutting of hay this year due to dry weather (though some parts of region seem better than others).

As for lespedeza, I have one small pasture (10 acres) planted with a mixture of it and turkeys love it. This time of year the turkeys have broken up into smaller groups, so we only see 6-10 birds at a time. Late fall and in the spring, the group grows to about 40 birds.

Though quail are not in high numbers in this part of state, I do have a nice covey of about 15 birds that seem to enjoy it as well.

P.S. For the first time in about 8 weeks, we have gotten 3 nice showers in past 72 hours!

IndianaPaul

[Hayseed]

My uncle was really bugging me last year to plant some lespedeza on his property in south Arkansas... seems he had read or was told that turkeys liked it and he wanted to see for himself if it made any difference in the turkey population on his property. There is a decent turkey populaton around his place but he says they always mysteriously disappear around turkey season. [img]/forums/images/icons/crazy.gif[/img]

I have only in the past couple of years started seeing coveys of quail again after not seeing them in his area for most of my life. He said quail and doves were prolific in the area back in the first half of the 20th century, back when most of the area was still farmed. There is very little farming there now and I guess all those woods don't make as good a habitat for them as the fields and crops used to in the old days. I saw my first covey of quail on one of my deer stands three years ago on a chilly November morning and could not have been more excited if I had seen a nice eight point. I don't hunt quail or doves but I really love to see them making a rebound there. I just like to watch and listen to them.