I want to start of with a reminder that this week is what we are calling the traveling Fall Weed Control workshop. I will be talking about weeds in five locations across Cherry County. I will be at the Wood Lake Cafe at 9:00 tomorrow morning and at Lillie’s in Sparks at 2:00 tomorrow afternoon. On Wednesday, I’ll be at the Village Hall in Merriman at 9 a.m. and the Community Center in Nenzel at 2:00 that afternoon. The workshop will be at the Extension Office in Valentine at 2:00 p.m. on Thursday. That’s mountain time for Merriman and Nenzel and central time for Wood Lake, Sparks and Valentine. Come join me and we’ll talk about weed control.
I want to talk briefly about sudangrass and sorghum-sudan’s response to freezing temperatures. Dr. Bruce Anderson will most likely be talking about plant response to freezing in next week’s forage minute, so I’ll try not to steal any of his thunder. after a freeze, the sudans might grow some new shoots from the base that could have prussic acid when small. This rarely happens since we usually run out of growing season. But you’ll probably want to keep an eye out for regrowth if you have cows out on sudan. They’re predicting warm temperatures for a while, so this may be one of those rare occasions that we do get some regrowth. One side note, prussic acid is not a concern for pearl or foxtail millet.
On October 3 at 7:30 pm Central Time we will be hosting a satellite conference downlink at the Extension Office meeting room. The satellite conference will help beef producers learn more about raising livestock that can be marketed internationally. Export programs are full of acronyms; BEV, PVP, QSA. This conference will help make sense of the alphabet soup. For U.S. beef to be eligible for export to countries like Japan, Korea or those in the European Union, the beef production must be done as part of a Beef Export Verification program.
The conference will also help producers understand the marketing opportunities available and the terminology and programs associated with exports, such as Processed Verified Programs and Quality Systems Assessment programs. The conference also will examine the potential benefits and costs associated with participating in these programs in order to raise cattle that can be exported internationally.
The conference is all about helping producers understand their options. If you have questions, join me at the Extension Office at 7:30 pm October 3 and we will help you sort through the various programs.
That’s all I have for today. I hope to see you later this week at the Fall Weed Control workshop in your neighborhood. As always you can contact the extension office at 376-1850 or visit us on the web at cherry.unl.edu for more information on any of the things I’ve covered.
