If you care about forage crop management, consider attending the Outagamie County Forage Council Twilight Meeting west of Freedom Wednesday evening. It should be a great event, with lots of topics, try to register as soon as you can, but you won't be turned away if you don't register.

Also, if you are interested in improving your pasture management or are considering switching any part of your operation towards grazing, there are two great events this Friday and Saturday - see information below. Broullire's are located between Niagara and Aurora off County Highway N.

Now on to the less fun topic of this message.  I have started receiving questions about what to do with extremely short, drought-stressed corn, whether that be entire fields or smaller areas of fields.  The really short answer is that we are probably best served by waiting.  I say that with the caveat that it will be the wrong answer if we get absolutely no rain in the next couple weeks. Also, make sure you contact your crop insurance agent/company prior to harvesting any crops early if you would decide to do so.

Why wait?  First, prior to any type of corn harvest, make sure you moisture test, as the drought-stressed plants are still higher moisture percentage than we would expect.  Further, the acres of extremely drought-stricken corn we have in some areas (Town of Beaver as the epicentre, but there are some really bad spots in all four counties.) are bad enough that there is essentially no grain on the plants.  When a corn plant has no grain, the plant will respond very quickly to any type of rain event and dramatically increase the moisture content.  Lastly (I'm trying to keep this short.), the silage produced from drought-stricken acres is going to be a problem trying to feed.  The quality is going to be very poor and the nitrate content is likely going to be very high.  That means you either need to completely segregate that feed and mix in as appropriate (after conducting good forage quality and nitrate testing) or you need to layer it in to your primary silage piles/bunkers so that it gets diluted by what will hopefully be normal to good silage.

If you have any individual questions or informational needs or other assistance, email me at scott.reuss@wisc.edu or call/text to 715-701-0966.