By Jennifer Dorsett
Field Editor
After a delayed start to the season, East Texas farmers and ranchers are making hay while the sun shines and temperatures warm up.
Greg Spigener, a hay farmer who does custom baleage and baling from Mount Pleasant, said harvest was just getting underway due to a series of cold fronts that left grasses growing slower than usual. Above average rainfall also set back the beginning of the season.
“The grass seemed like it was about to start growing, and then we had cool snaps that set everything back,” Spigener said. “Now we’ve been slow getting started harvesting trying to dodge this rain.”
Spigener said he was about to start cutting baleage from cool season crops like legumes, ryegrass and winter wheat.
Baleage is a way to store grasses at their optimal protein content until there is a need for supplemental feeding. Hay is cut and then quickly baled and wrapped completely in plastic, which eliminates the oxygen supply. The bale undergoes a fermentation process and becomes silage, a high-moisture feed for cattle, sheep and other ruminants.
Billy Alexander, a hay farmer and custom baler from Carthage, agreed the season is off to a slow start.
He is usually baling hay by the first week in April, but this year’s unseasonably cool temperatures and extensive rainfall has delayed crop growth and harvest.
“This is probably one of the strangest years for weather we’ve ever seen,” Alexander said. “We just started cutting (last) week. That’s the latest I’ve ever started.”
While the winter pasture looks good, it’s just been too wet to bale, according to Alexander. He said it’s taking four or five days for the cut hay to dry enough to be baled.
Drought conditions, however, continue in West Texas and the Panhandle.
“The ongoing drought is impacting the cattle herd in West Texas and the Panhandle. Ranchers are culling their herds, but they’re still going to need feed for the cattle they keep. So there could possibly be a higher demand for hay this year,” Tracy Tomascik, Texas Farm Bureau associate director of Commodity and Regulatory Activities, said. “Even though the season has been delayed a bit by cool temperatures and higher-than-normal moisture in East Texas, the early season grasses look good. Now it’s a matter of getting that warm season grass going and hoping there’s enough to get everyone through the year.”
Farmers and ranchers expect to get underway baling warm season grasses like Bermuda and bahiagrass sometime in June.