Tips for Purchasing Hay This Fall

Sep 13, 2021

With the growing season and the lack of moisture, livestock producers are trying to line up feeds supplies.

Due to low production this year, many will have to look at purchasing hay from regions further away this year.

Victoria Foster, an agri-environmental specialist with the ministry of agriculture talks about what to look for when purchasing hay.

"Two really important things to think about are feed quality and the costs," she said. "Another really important factor to be mindful of is the purity of the hay, and by that, I mean ensuring that we are not bringing weeds onto our operations from another region. Drought conditions reduce the vigour of pasture vegetation and as a result, we have more bare ground and less competitive forage stand."

She added that due to the drought conditions hay may be sourced from areas such as sloughs and ditches which might not have a normal weed control program.

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Video: Learning to Wrench From Dad the Hard Way

Harvest is a week out and the farm picked this week to fall apart. The truck needs a battery, the barn curtain's got a problem, and the corn and beans are telling us we're out of time to get it all fixed.

So it's a full day of wrenching. Tork supervises while I get the truck back running, then we're out at the hog barn where one rusted up part has the whole curtain system hung up. Ladder work, cable work, and a little dad-and-son disagreement about the right way to do it. We close it out walking the fields, shelling beans and checking corn, because whether everything's fixed or not, harvest starts when harvest starts.

Chapters: 00:00 Everything breaks the week before harvest 01:00 Tork supervises while I fix the truck 12:30 Out to the barn to find the curtain problem 14:30 One rusty part hung up the whole curtain 20:00 Running the curtain cable from the ladder 24:00 Walking the beans and corn before harvest 26:30 Wrapping up

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