2018 a Year of Rain and Challenges 

As an Agriculture agent you often need to react to the challenges that the local farmers are facing at that very moment.  Unfortunately these challenges are often the results of weather events (that we have no control over) such as drought, storms or in the case of the spring of 2018 and the winter of 2018/2019, TO MUCH RAIN. The impact of what most farmers would consider too much rain resulted in poor quality hay in 2018 and mud beyond belief for livestock farmers during the winter months.  Rain and mud resulted in poor quality hay being wasted and cows needing more nutrition than usual.  During the winter feeding program cows began to lose weight, spring calves were born weak and the increase in death loss for KY cattle farmers was more than they/we had ever experienced. 

As an agent it is hard to prepare for such events but you need to react to such events and plan accordingly. I knew that the poor hay quality of 2018 would have a negative impact on cow nutrition and calf health especially in the early months of 2019.  To address these issues I planned a more aggressive forage testing and ration balancing program during the fall of 2018.  This resulted in 15 farmers doing forage testing, six for the first time. A " Winter Feeding Tour was held during the early fall that focusing on winter feeding facilities and mud control. (17 attended)  As mud became more of an issue an “emergency” meeting called "The Winter of Mud: Consequences and Solutions" was held to address mud control, the loss of body condition of cows and cow nutrition, weak calves and death loss. (18 attended, wish there had been more). In addition a Calving Strategies program (21 attended) was held that focused on the impact of winter and mud and how this would impact the calving season. In addition to educational programs, news articles on forage testing, nutrition, calving and mud control were a part of several newsletters. 

I have no idea how many cows and calves lived because of these extra efforts but I can say that Extensions efforts made a difference to a good number of farmers who sought solutions to the challenges they were facing.   

Hay production in 2019 has started out even worse than 2018.  I have already planned educational programs, field days and demonstrations to prepare livestock farmers with what could easily be another challenging winter.