Unlike a lot of folks that I have talked to, our hay crop turned off much better than I expected this year. Where most people were reporting harvesting 40-60% of normal, we harvested about 80% of our normal yield. That is still considerably less than normal, but I was satisfied given the fact that we did not put any fertilizer down.

Also, for the first time, we had our hay custom made. Our neighbor had been baling our hay for the past several years. This year we paid him to cut, rake, and bale it. It worked out well as it allowed us to bush hog and spray pastures while the hay was being made.
We carried over 250 bales from last year, all still in the barn. Our hay ground produced 120 bales from first cutting. We also purchased hay from three of our immediate neighbors putting our grand total in the barn at 561 bales. Depending on how much hay second cutting makes, out barns may be busted full going into the winter.

The cows have been grazing through their rotations this summer in a single group. It has worked well not having two smaller groups of cows. The larger, single herd has moved through the fields faster, and therefore the forage gets more days rest between grazing. And like most folks this year, we have had a tremendous stand of red clover all summer long. This has made for a good grazing year and the cows look good because of it. Now I just hope that this fall has some moisture and we can grow some good stockpiles of fescue. 

In June we shifted our focus to forages.  Normally this means getting the first cutting of hay in the barn, but the weather didn’t allow us to start laying it down. We did have time in between the rain to get some spraying done.

Most of the farm can be covered with our tractor and 300 gallon pull type sprayer. However, there are some areas that get very steep and rough that make it high risk to get on with equipment. For these sections we hired the services of SkyFarm Drones.

I called Kevin Bryan (Owner of SkyFarm Drones) and he came out that week to spray. The first step was to use a small drone to collect high resolution images of the areas to be sprayed. This is done to identify hazards in the field such as large trees, large branches at field edges, and powerlines. This imagery is then uploaded into the large spray drone’s software and used to create spraying patterns for each individual area.

The spraying drones is impressive to watch. It is approximately 12 feet across and carries a 10 gallon payload. It can fly for 10-15 mins then lands to refill with herbicide and switch out batteries. The drone will fly itself while spraying unless an obstacle is sensed and then the pilot will take over and maneuver safely around the obstacle. The drone follows the predetermined route creating an even and complete coverage across the area.

In total, SkyFarm Drones sprayed 31 acres of our most steep and rugged terrain. They also captured high resolution imagery of the entire farm for future reference. It was a huge help for them to allows us not to have to get a tractor on these areas. Since the application we have found the coverage to be even and consistent throughout.

I am grateful for their services and would highly recommend SkyFarm Drones if you are interested in areal applications. They are capable of both spraying or seeding pastures. They can be contacted at www.skyfarmdrones.com.