From the Barns: Managing heat stress

The official start of summer started off with a vengeance down here as the last week of June was a scorcher. Temperatures were in the mid-to-upper 90s, and they were saying heat indexes during that time ranged from 105 to 115 degrees. It was hot and humid, no matter what that number was.

We had done everything we knew to do to prepare the cattle for this, and to my knowledge we did not lose any cattle to heat stress. As we checked on them off and on throughout the day, you could see they were feeling the effects of that stress and feed intakes for cattle on feed did suffer somewhat, but not anywhere as severely as I have seen in the past.

Cattle that are grazing didn’t actually do much grazing between the hours of 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Every animal has access to shade of some sort, so that helped mitigate the effects. No doubt some cattle would have died without that.

Speaking of grass, we do have a lot of it. We have been getting enough timely rains to make the grass grow and it is lush and green. I had written previously that we sowed a sudangrass mix. I have to admit I made a mistake in not spraying to kill other grasses, thinking we could save some dollars by doing so. Last fall we had sprayed to kill the invasive buttercup weed and that proved very effective.

I was told, and it proved true, that we would have residual carryover to take care of summer broadleaf weeds. So, when it came time to sow the sudangrass, everything was eaten down so thought I could get by with not spraying, but with all this moisture other volunteer grasses and grass weeds came out strong, proving to be a lot of competition for the sudangrass. So, even though we got a decent stand, it is not thriving as it should be. But there is a lot of edible forage out there, so we will get by for now, knowing that we cannot forego spraying the next time.

We did host the Purina field day last month and it turned out well. Big crowd enjoying a tour of the farm and the seeing of all the cattle and I think the Purina folks were pleased with the meeting.

The following week we hosted, at the request of Illinois Natural Resources Conservation Service, a producer roundtable to discuss Environmental Quality Incentives Program practices and the process with which producers have to go through to obtain and implement conservation practices on their farms. A number of southern Illinois livestock farmers were here, joined by the state director and other NRCS officials, to ask questions back and forth and discuss the good and bad of the EQIP process and implementation. It turned out to be a worthwhile meeting as we got to share needs, concerns and successes.

Sold some fat cattle a few weeks ago and scheduled to send another load the week of July 20 up to USPB in Tama, Iowa. Price still very strong and I don’t see much change in that in the near future. Probably another load to go the month after that.

Somewhat of a quiet time otherwise, but a good time maybe to jump in and do mowing, manure hauling and spreading and get to work on some EQIP practices that need finished and started. Fencing projects, as well. The high temps have abated somewhat and this coming week looks pretty good for this time of year. Hopefully we have seen the worst of summer, but don’t count on it as the dog days are still ahead.