Area dairy farmers feeling spring’s rain

Corn and soybean farmers may be feeling the pinch this year as a result of heavy and long spring rains, but so are area dairy farmers. Cattle depend on the grains and hays that are grown in local fields, and those crops have been pushed back this year, too, right along with the corn and beans.

Dairy farmer Cash Biros, who is also president of the Grundy County Farm Bureau, said it’s all resulted in less milk production from his cows. The quality of this year’s fresh feed combined with the rapid rise in temperatures last week dropped production of milk at Biros’ farm 2,000 pounds in two days.

He and his father Vince together own about a hundred cows at the farm about a mile northeast of Mazon. Their milk ends up in Prairie Farms milk.

They grow what they need to feed the cattle, including corn, which they use as feed, silage, and bedding; wheat as straw for bedding and a summer cash crop; oats as a feed additive and straw that they bale for bedding; rye for forage; sorghum as feed; alfalfa hay as forage; and soybeans.

All of these crops depend on good conditions for planting and growing, especially the first few weeks of their growing season. Good conditions are important for harvesting, too.

Biros’ alfalfa hay, for example, has to be dry to bale. It was hard to find a dry day to bale it this year, he said, so they had to wait and put it up later than they would have liked. That meant a lower quality hay to feed the cows, and that meant less milk.

“Humans and cows are the same,” he said, “in that you are what you eat.”

For other crops, planting had to be delayed for some until after the rains. For others that they got in before the wet weather set in, many were damaged by too much rain. The crops will be stunted and they will have to be harvested later in the season.

Biros has been working on replanting some soybeans, too. He already had them in when his area got a good five inches of rain on June 22. The young plants in two or three acres of his field were washed out or covered with silt or just died from sitting in all the water.

Several of his neighbors had damage from that storm, too, on top of all the problems from the spring rain. Biros said the ones who replanted beans will have to decide whether to harvest the more mature ones first then go back to the ones replanted later on, or just wait to harvest the whole field at one time.

Some of the corn got washed out in the June storm, too, but it’s too late to replant that crop.

It’s tough, Biros said, with all the ups and downs of the weather each year, but this year has been particularly stressful.

“We’ve had some wet seasons,” he said, “but this is one of the wettest anyone can remember.”

The corn harvest will most likely be late, too, this year, he said, because of the late planting time and because the crews that do the silage chopping will be here later.

Then, after all the rain, with no fresh rye and no fresh alfalfa, and with the fact that manure couldn’t be spread because they couldn’t get the rye off in time, came the sudden hot spell last week. Biros’ cows were not happy. There are fans, and Biros opened all the doors and windows, but he had to cut two additional holes in the shed to keep the cows from getting too warm. Even then, though, production slowed way down and hasn’t caught back up.

But all in all, Biros said it’s not the worst year.

“If the crops can catch up in the stunted areas,” he said, “and we get plenty of sunshine and no more heavy rains, we should snap out of it. . . The hottest days are yet to come, though.”

Biros said he’s just trying to keep the cows healthy, even with a crop that’s not ideal. If they get sick and need antibiotics, he can’t sell that milk. Plus, this is a bad year for the price of milk. Currently, Biros isn’t even breaking even. Milk is going at $9.00 per 100 weight now, and Biros said they need $16.00 to break even.

“It really hurts that the price of milk is so low,” he said. “It’s not a good situation.”

And even though the spring rains are gone, the summer weather will still be a big factor on milk production. His cows produce better in cooler weather, but the stunted corn will need lots of hot, humid weather to grow best.

“That’s the catch,” Biros said.