[Tim Harrigan]

I forgot, what is the infectious dose of O157:H7? I read that there are even more toxigenic strains of E. coli that they will be testing for in the near future. Is that true?

[Tim Harrigan]

So if the range for a healthy cow is 100-1000 per ml, 1000 looks like the upper limit for detectable mastitis. Because milk is cooled to about 40 deg. immediately after milking do you think it is possible for bacteria in milk to increase to 200,000 without outside contamination?

[Tim Harrigan]

Countymouse;21021 wrote:

Given that fresh milk from a healthy cow contains 100-1000 total bacteria per ml before processing and storage, one could make the argument that it is the freshness of the milk (rather than the processing) that is the primary determinant of it’s ability to produce disease.

http://ohioline.osu.edu/fse-fact/pdf/0003.pdf

So is that 100-1000 the expected bacterial count of milk in the udder? It seems to me that the risk is in the handling and storage. That makes sense to me, the list of organisms is pretty heavily represented by fecal pathogens.

[Tim Harrigan]

Mark Cowdrey;20992 wrote:

Can anyone address the pros and cons of spreading fresh and/or compost in Fall vs. Spring. Other than wet areas are usually more accessible during a dry Fall like this (in NH).

Mark

If fresh manure is spread early in the fall when the air and soil are warm your N loss will be high. If you leave it on the surface you will also have losses in runoff water with fall rains and snow melt. That is also possible with compost, but much of the compost N was probably lost in the composting process. A spring application will make better use of manure N for crop growth if it is worked in the soil immediately, particularly if it was applied earlier in the spring when the soil was cool. Fresh manure will often have more readily available N than compost. Bedded pack manure with a lot of bedding may actually tie up N in the process of decomposition though so it would not always be true that you would have more N from manure. Both should have available P and K.

Grey has thought it through pretty well.

[Tim Harrigan]

Donn Hewes;20964 wrote:

… I have one pasture where rain run off is spread out with a long ditch. I have seen excessive growth, without any legumes. My understanding is that Legumes will die out when N is persistently high.

Legumes will fix nitrogen from the atmosphere if it is not available in the soil. If N is applied from manure or other sources the legume will use it and fix less. I have not heard of N being toxic to legumes, but heavy N fertilization will stimulate grass growth so that it is much more competitive than legumes. Legumes don’t like competition. An example is the increase in white clover in pasture when it is over-grazed, and the increase in grass when N fertilizer is applied.

[Tim Harrigan]

Any chance you could find those tile lines with a probe?

[Tim Harrigan]

dominiquer60;20989 wrote:

… Any ideas of what I did wrong or rather do you have a different approach that I could try in the future to conserve moisture in a less than ideal cover crop seeding season?

This is one of the drawbacks of using cover crops. If you do not get timely rain the work and cost of establishment are wasted or disappointing. This also shows the challenge of relying on tillage for weed control. Tillage dries and warms the soil. Fallow with intermittent tillage is a good way to reduce weed pressure if you have occasional rain to germinate the weed seeds followed by dry periods for tillage and dessication. But with no rain the soil is too dry for weed seed germination, and too dry to establish the cover crop.

You need moisture from either rain or capillary rise. You had little rain, and the tillage that you used (moldboard, disk) pretty much eliminated capillary rise. Your growth window for oats and peas is starting to close with frost coming in a month or so. So you plant and hope for rain that may come too late. You may need to reseed rye if you want a winter cover.

A brillion seeder is great for clovers, alfalfa, some grasses, etc. It is a shallow seeder that works well in a fine seedbed. Oats and peas will respond better when seeded deeper, maybe an inch or so. A harrow will mix the soil but leave the seed at variable depth. A disk might be better for covering such large seeds. A good timely rain will compensate for shallow or surface seeding, but no rain shows the weakness of that approach. A drill would be better because you could seed deeper where there may be enough moisture for germination and growth.

Tillage is bit of a fight with nature. Think about how seeds are distributed and establish in nature. Seeds fall to the ground and move by wind or rain (or manure from birds or grazing animals) and become lodged beneath crop residue or a crack in the soil. These are protected micro-climates that are resistant to wide swings in soil temperature and moisture that inhibits germination. The percent of seeds that find suitable sites is low, but nature is patient. Your finely prepared seedbed is dry, no crop residue cover to conserve moisture or moderate temperature. Seeds at or near the surface suffer wide swings in temperature. No rain, no crop. Good seed to soil contact is not enough in these conditions, so an additional disking might not be the answer.

I have had good luck seeding in some very rough conditions. For example, after tilling with a rotary tiller set a couple inches deep, low tiller speed and fast ground speed to just chunk up the soil rather than pulverize it to a fine seedbed. Then broadcast the seed over the top and pack the soil with ATV wheels. The seeds were at variable depths, some deeper than they should have been, but because the soil was clumpy the seeds were able to germinate (from a protected micro-climate) and grow out from cracks and fissures in the soil because there was light and not a lot of resistance for the emerging seedling to push through. Moisture from capillary rise was possible because soil disturbance was neither deep nor intensive. When it did rain, the seed and soil were resistant to erosion because of the rough, residue covered surface.

Sometimes our idea of a good seedbed is not borne out in seed germination and growth. I have been doing quite a bit of puzzling over seed comfort related to work in integrating manure with cover crop establishment. I have been seeding in some rough seedbeds with little thought to seed/soil contact but using tillage to create protected micro-climates with more stable temperature and moisture. Check out this video on slurry seeding at the Blight Farm http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3st0qZ_3vH0 You can also access it from the Midwest Cover Crops Council web site http://www.mccc.msu.edu/SlurrySeeding.html

I posted some pics from the site somewhere on this site a week or so ago, and sometime this week I will tack a few more minutes on the Blight video to show cover crop growth. The soil surface you see right behind the aeration tillage tool is the final seedbed, the seed was added to the liquid slurry and seeded with the liquid manure. I also no-till drilled the covers in alternate strips and the same day went over the top of the drilled crop with aeration tillage and manure, knowing that the aeration tillage tool would undo the seed to soil contact from the drill. Great stands in both cases.

It is always interesting to challenge our perception of what a comfortable seed environment really is.

[Tim Harrigan]

jac;20980 wrote:

I know im miles behind on this but iv been away… would a bigger diameter disc of 24″ help…. would it pull easier because of the bigger dia and do away with the need for ballast ??..
John

I don’t think it would make much practical difference. With the bigger blades the disk would be heavier and pull a little harder because of the added weight, but the bigger blades would put more steel in contact with the ground and therefore not run as deep. So those tend to offset each other.

[Tim Harrigan]

Are you showing them? If not, the only important question is are they responsive and willing workers? Showing and competing in that way has many benefits, one of the drawbacks is it can shift attention to things that are superficial and have little meaning except in the show ring.

[Tim Harrigan]

http://www.pestid.msu.edu/DiagnosticFactsheets/tabid/218/Default.aspx

Here is a link to some updated plant disease info from MSU. There is a new late blight fact sheet with some pictures in the ‘diagnostic factsheets’ section. Might come in handy next year…

[Tim Harrigan]

near horse;20880 wrote:

Holy cow – 3T/ac is 100 bushels (@60#) – that’s a great yield here (dryland farming w/ no irrigation). Especially with $6/bu wheat this yr.

John, is that metric tons? 110 bu/acre then at 3T.

[Tim Harrigan]

jac;20876 wrote:

Surely horse farmed land doesnt have the same pan problems as the tractor boys ??….
John

Actually plow pans have been a problem in many fields and are related to the compression of the soil right beneath the normal depth of the moldboard plow (plough :)). Vehicle compaction is another issue.

[Tim Harrigan]

There are no-till drills and planters and some tillage equipment that would be considered min-till in some situations like the chisel plow or some other combination tillage tools that are designed to work in crop residue. Others like the AerWay for aeration tillage or low-disturbance subsoilers would be other examples. Weed control gets to be more of a challenge with less tillage, it seems like most animal power farming is still with the tools that were designed for it, moldboard plow, disk, harrows, etc.

[Tim Harrigan]

That is on a 40 acre demonstration site that I have about an hour from my place so it is not my land. It would be a good graze for sheep or cattle but the owner is not set up to graze. So in this case the cover is a catch crop for nutrients and for soil quality benefits. The oats will probably be killed by frost by mid-October and the turnips and radish will probably grow into December before they winter kill. The farmer will no-till corn into it next spring.

[Tim Harrigan]

One of the reasons oat/turnip are a nice mix is that the oats carry the turnip through the drill. Turnip alone is really hard to meter because it is so small. I used a drill and there was some separation on a small ledge in the grain box, but the stand looks great. I did not run it through a broadcast spreader. I think is is more likely that the seeds will throw at a different distance. So the suggestion to seed at right angles is good. It will probably turn out better than you think. You can always spread between a couple of tarps and see what hits and where.

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