Eden Shale Farm - August 2018

To a farmer the long days of summer simply means that there is more daylight to get work done. Never is this more apparent than during the months of June and July, and I can assure you that we have been taking full advantage of the long days at Eden Shale.

June allowed us great hay making weather and we were able to get all of the first cutting baled without it getting rained on. We have also baled and wrapped the first cutting of our sorghum sudan grass. We have baled a total of 306 bales so far this year. We typically need about 425 bales to get us through a normal year, so we are setting in good shape at this point in the season.

Last month we purchased 24 cull cows that are grazing in the paddocks. They will be rotated through the paddocks for 60 days and then we will harvest them through Beef Solutions. We recently purchased 20 more cull cows that will be kept in the bull barn and bucket fed two different rations. The first group will be fed a standard 3-way commodity feed and the second group will be fed a custom mixed ration that Burkmann Nutrition put together for the trial. These cows will again be fed for 60 days and then harvested through Beef Solutions. These cattle will be harvested in August and early September and I will share the results once they have been processed.

On July 9th we started work on three new construction projects with Dr. Higgins. One project will be a new option for winter feeding and the other two will be water harvesting projects, one of which will eliminate the need for an unreliable pond to water the cattle. We are very excited to get this new infrastructure added to the farm and I invite you to come to our Open House field day on October 13th where we will be showcasing these three new projects.

July was also a busy month for having people at the farm. We hosted 9 different field day/tours that totaled 185 people from 30 different Kentucky Counties during the month of July. Most of the visitors were cattle producers from across the state, but we also hosted a group of High School Ag Teachers, and a group of inner city kids from Lexington.
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I would like to thank everyone who visited Eden Shale Farm, as well as Dr. Higgins for his time in helping to give the tours. I also need to thank our farm manager Greg and our intern Ben for keeping the production of the farm running while I spent time hosting these groups. These are the folks that continue to make Eden Shale Farm a success.  I hope that producers in Kentucky see a value in the work that we are doing and continue pushing us to provide new and innovative ideas for the beef industry. Because at the end of the day, that is the ultimate goal for Eden Shale Farm.