Brian Triplett: Ag Biz

Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys sang about "Miles and Miles of Texas," and I had the opportunity to experience quite a few of them earlier this month when I drove to Amarillo for our annual county agricultural Extension agent's state meeting. The meetings rotate around the state, providing agents with an opportunity to see agricultural enterprises that are different from what they may have at home. This year's conference was "Winds of Change," and that was a very fitting slogan for what is occurring up on those Panhandle plains.

I participated in the beef/ethanol tour of Deaf Smith County and the town of Hereford.

Along the way we passed quite a few of the electricity generating windmills that are starting to outnumber the old fashioned water pumping kind near the town of Vega. They are quite an economic boon to the producers who happen to own land in a prime location (somewhere between $3,000 to $6,000 per turbine per year seems to be the going rate) and have pushed Texas to the forefront of wind energy generation in the United States.

Hereford, named after the cattle breed, is known as the beef capitol of the world. The 15,000 residents of this friendly community are greatly outnumbered by the nearly 1 million head of cattle that are annually fed in the Deaf Smith County feedlots. We toured a feedlot with a 24,000-head capacity and learned about how feedlot operators contract local farmers to grow corn and grain sorghum for use in silage, and wheat farmers for grazing lighter calves during the winter. The feedlots depend upon cattle from all over -- especially East Texas, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas -- to keep the pens full and to stay in business.

The abundant local grain and forage production, combined with an arid climate, has attracted expansion in the dairy industry of Deaf Smith County, we were told. The county now has about 30,000 head of dairy cattle, mainly from the relocation of dairies from California and the Stephenville area. The influx of dairies has driven up the cost of irrigated farmland and has created competition for the feedlots in contracting fields for silage production.

Also moving into the area were two ethanol plants. The plants were drawn to Hereford to be closer to the feedlots and dairies in order to help them dispose of their main byproduct -- distillers' grains. The feedlots and dairies in turn are retooling their feed mills and feed rations to handle the incorporation of this new feed stuff.

Don't forget! Turn in your Smith County Hay Show samples by Friday. Call our office at 903-590-2980 for a complete set of rules and drop-off locations.

The $3 entry fee per hay sample is less than the $10 per sample it costs to send hay in for testing on your own. For the $3, you will receive a ribbon for your hay (blue, red or white), recognition at the hay auction if it is in the top 25 bales, and nutritional information (crude protein and digestibility) for your hay samples.

� Hay produced in Smith County, or by a producer who lives in Smith County, is eligible for entry. An entry consists of one square bale of hay from a cutting or one feed sack full of hay (if the hay from a cutting is rolled into round bales).

Producers who submit more than one sample are encouraged to write on the entry tag (other than in the space marked entry number) a code such as cutting number, field name or something else that will help them be able to correlate their samples back to the results that will be mailed to them following the show and sale. It is recommended that producers submit samples from each field for each cutting.

Hay should be stored by cutting so that if cuttings vary greatly in nutritional content, they can be matched with the appropriate supplemental feed. You can feed lower quality hay earlier in the winter and save better quality hay for later when weather conditions are less favorable.

Finally, we can't have a show without support of farmers and ranchers. Last year, 133 hay samples were submitted and the auction raised more than $22,750 to support scholarships, youth activities and conservation efforts.

The hay show committee is planning a wrap-up dinner in October. Submitting hay will get you an invitation to this event.

Entry dates for this year's show are Aug. 21-22.

Places where hay can be submitted are: Arp -- 3M Feed & Supply; Bullard -- Circle C Farm & Ranch; Lindale -- Fleming Farm Supply; Noonday -- Noonday Feed Store; Troup -- Steele's Feed & Seed; Tyler -- Al H. Horaney's, Estes Inc., Natural Resources Conservation Service, Rose Country Equipment, Smith County Extension office, Stampede Feed & Ag Supply and Tyler Equipment; and Whitehouse -- Whitehouse Farm & Ranch.

Brian Triplett is the Smith County Extension agent for agriculture and natural resources. He can be reached at 903-590-2980 or via e-mail at b-triplett@tamu.edu or on the web at http://agrilifeblogs.tamu.edu/mt/smith or http://smith-tx.tamu.edu .

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Brian Triplett
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