 Kay, first one of me to make sure you guys are aware of if you're doing any intercropping of legumes into native range, stuff that's never been farmed, make sure you check with your FSA office. You may potentially have to sign a 1026. She doesn't want to get anyone in trouble, so make sure you check with her if you want to do any legumes or forbs into native range land. That was first thing. Second thing was when I said the radishes, make sure you plant, or the radishes you want to plant after the summer solstice. That's one of those species that will just bolt and flower if you plant in the spring. There's been a number of guys that raised radishes seed. If you plant in the spring, it's just gonna bolt and flower, produces very little vegetated growth, very little taproot. If you plant it July, or approximately July 5th or later, they'll produce the big taproot that you want for that surface compaction or deeper compaction. I'm sorry, the deeper compaction, okay? My talk here's gonna cover some impacts that we had from 2016 crop year where we put cover crops into small grain residue, looking how it impacted 2017 corneal. And as I've done a lot of talks in cover crops and last, oh, probably 10, 12 years now. And we look at all these good, positive things on cover crops, and the one I really don't have up there is actually to provide traffic ability for your equipment that next spring when you're planting your corn crop. That's really why we brought cover crops into small grain residue initially was because guys were complaining about no-tilling corn in a timely fashion into a heavy wheat residue. So we're trying to use a little bit of extra moisture. We get in the fall, and a number of you have seen these slides before. Gettysburg, we're looking at about 19 average long-term 30-year precept. And if we look at that window where we're going from wheat to corn, when does winter wheat stop using an appreciable amount of water to when corn starts using an appreciable amount of water? Somewhere between that August to June timeframe, 13 inches of plant-available water or a precept falls in that timeframe. A good soil profile, silt loam, five feet down, five feet deep is gonna hold 11 inches of plant-available water. We're at 13 inches, we're already over full. So we should have in most normal years enough moisture there to produce that cover crop and not her next year's corn crop in most years. This year was an exception as most of you know. So probably kind of know where I'm going with this a little bit. And this was the year where we had that half. You know, what happens if we get less than half of normal? Remember we had 13.2 inches, a precept falling out of year or during that timeframe. This year we had that less than six inches falling in that timeframe. And we had some decent moisture last that fall of 2016 where we actually had a tremendous cover crop growing in the fall of 2016. Remember it was long, it was warm. We had some good moisture. We had a lot of cover crop growth. If we look at some of the research data from Dakota Lakes, we had two different rotations here on dry land. This is all dry land stuff here I'm gonna be talking about. November 15, 2007, three feet down where we had the cover crop. We had a little bit over four inches and a top three feet of plant-available water where we had no cover crop, five inches. Again, that's what would be after the cover crop is really done growing and doing its thing. If we look at that, following spring in 2008 where we had the cover crop, most of the time we always gain moisture in the spring. This year or that year, 2008, we actually were two inches behind compared to where we had no cover crop. If we look how that happened or how it translated into corn yield, wheat corn pea, no cover crop, about 100 bushel where we had the cover crop after the winter. Prior to this first year corn, we actually cut that yield in half. So this isn't something that's never happened in the past. We've had it happen before and it's gonna probably happen down the road in some years. Now, what we always preach is they have enough carbon in that cover crop mixture. And I'll show you some slides here where carbon is probably the most limiting nutrient. Most people think it's nitrogen, it's actually carbon. Dorfusx Rape is a Brassica. If we have 100% Brassica as a cover crop mixture, our yield is cut even further yet, 26 bushel. Here we have a mixture of some legume and some Brassica's 57 bushel. And granted, this isn't any high carbon cover crops in there, but you see by including the Rape in there, it definitely cut the yield in half when it's 100% Brassica. What did you mean by carbon is the most limiting? Carbon is the most limiting nutrient probably. And I'll show you or I'll talk more about that here in a minute. Just some additional years as far as cover crop soil moisture. Again, taking late fall after the cover crop's done its thing, wheat stubble with no cover crop, top three feet, seven inches of plant available water where we had cover crop in these other two, three inches. So we use four inches of plant available water, which in most years we replenish that with our spring moisture, snow and rain in the spring and don't have a problem with it. This year was kind of like that year. Just an example of VS replenishing that soil moisture. This is a study up in Bismarck, North Dakota, very fine, sandy loam soils cover crop with three inches of plant available water compared to no cover crop, three inches. Again, replenish it in the spring. This was done in Redfield in the spring of 2006 where we had no cover crop, 11 inches, where we had a cover crop over here, a little bit over 10 inches there. So again, no cover crop compared to cover crop, virtually the same in the spring. And that usually happens in most years. Now, when I said carbon is probably the most limiting factor or nutrient I should say, Taylor made a comment that that study on down in for Nebraska was three years. Quite honestly, three years is not long enough to determine management impacts or rotational impacts. This took us 12 years to find, to see this. Dakota Lakes Farm was started in 1990 and these three or these two dry land rotations were started at that time. You notice that the sequence, these are all winter wheat yields and you notice these are both after field pea crops. Winter wheat after field pea. We have a high-residue rotation here, high-residue crop, where it's two-thirds high-residue crops. Corn is a high-residue producing crop. Winter wheat is a high-residue producing crop. Field pea is a low-residue producing crop. Okay, two-thirds, two out of three years high-residue producing crops. Soybean, low-residue crop, corn high, field pea low, winter wheat high. 50%, no different than a corn bean, corn bean, corn bean rotation. Only 50% of the crops are high-residue. Again, 12 years, we notice where we have a high-residue rotation. The wheat yields were double in several years. It doesn't happen every single year, but it seems like once we get water stress at a certain point, that's the tipping area and we start seeing those huge increases where we have a lot of carbon in that system. Does that answer your question there? Is part of that carbon you're talking about some of that effect, the armor effect or the shading? Yes, it does, yes it does. That's a lot of it. And just like some of those five principles over there, the soil cover is extremely important. But it's also building organic matters, building that resilience. Organic matter is extremely critical from a standpoint of holding water, basically carrying over that crop throughout those two to three weeks of hot, dry weather. That's basically what it's doing. And when you have the low-residue crops, too many low-residue crops in your crop rotation, it's actually starting to mine away that organic matter versus building it, even when you convert to no-till. Those guys in a corn bean belt, they're losing organic matter at a very slow rate, even if they're going no-till at a very slow rate, they're still losing it. Not enough material there to start building in and sustaining that soil organic matter level. So, there was a project done here in Potter County involved three producers, Thad Barangers, which I'll spend the most amount of time on. And then Dan Forges or Cronin Farms had another site that was at the end of the taco. I have some data on that. And then Bob Rausch had a site also where we planted cover crops and did various treatments in them. Thad Barangers had a cover crop planted after spring wheat harvest, drill August 4th. And real close to my date, if I had one date I would pick out for the entire year would be if I could have my cover crops planted on August 5th of every year, I would shoot for that. I guess it just tends to be right in that sweet spot. Granted, it can fluctuate from two weeks on either side of that. But generally we get enough warm weather in late September to early October to make some of these species flourish. And this was the year for, or this was the date for 2016. But you see the mixture there, sedan grass, radish, Winfred Brassica is gonna be a hybrid of kale and turnip, very winter hardy, oats, flax, turnips and peas. You notice there's a fair amount of higher carbon crops in there, sedan grass. Oats and flax are all considered high residue crops in that situation there. That picture was, let's see here. September 21st is when this picture was taken, decent stand there. Prior to, or going in the fall, the soil scientist from the peer office came up and did some infiltration rates, plus some bulk density measurements. Bob's was a little bit over one gram per cubic centimeters. If you wanna know where your ballpark is, anything under 1.4 for the silt loam soils is good. So all these guys were in very good category. Fads was 0.88, Crohn's were 1.14. So all very good rates there. Now, if ad turned out 100 head of cow calf pairs on the 80 acres, he had a quarter section planted in cover crops. He split this quarter section in the north-south and grazed the east half of this quarter. And right next door to it, he had a quarter of grass, actually where the cows had to go out and get water. Started grazing September 22nd. He moved the fence 200 feet after six days just as a quick flash grazing to see if that did anything. Pulled the herd October 7th. So only had 16 days of grazing out there with 100 head of cow calf pairs. So what it looks like October 21st. So this was several days after he pulled them off. Again, he pulled them off October 7th. Good residue cover there, looks okay. That's where the fence line was at. This is November 4th. We had stuff that re-grew after he took the cows off. We had an excellent fall for some regrowth. Now, I got a call on September 20th from Dan Forree, who was called by Thad. Thad happened to be out there walking between the area that was grazed versus non-grazed. And he said, there's at least a 30 bushel corn yield hit there. I'm going, you gotta be kidding me. I've never heard of that. That's impossible. Either he severely overgrazed it or something went terribly wrong there. So I have access to two planes with cameras on them. We took some aerial imagery the very next day on September 21st. Granted, we're probably a month behind where we should have taken. This is just a picture of a synthetic natural color there. Here's a green NDVI. Here's where that fence line was. Shows up very clearly there. Again, this half was grazed. This half was not grazed, but the entire quarter section had cover crops on it. Everyone with me so far? We took it to yield or obviously you combined it. That's the yield map there. See where the fence line's at? I drew a polygon and field view around that area. I always leave off the field border. So the field border off here was off. And then the north end and the south end, I leave the field borders off. 67 bushel averaged there compared to the west half that was ungrazed, 117. 50 bushel yield difference. Really got scratched in my head when I saw this. So after harvest, well, let's continue on here. Here's some satellite imagery, Sentinel satellite imagery, 10 meter resolution way better than Landsat July 5th. You can see it already July 5th, that line there. August 4th. You see the line, you can also see that 200 feet where he was out there, where he just moved it, grazed it only six days and then moved the fence line. And there's our green, yeah, our green NDVI. So I thought right away that he over grazed. I didn't even see the photos until well after I started digging it as further. I'm thinking he way over grazed, beat it to death, et cetera. So I wanted to take, after corn harvest, the Gettysburg office, Tom and James helped me gather the residue with a hoop, took out all the corn stocks and corn stover off the sites and just clipped the remaining wheat straw and any old cover crop growth from that area. And all the grazed ones were actually, they had a lot of residue there, but it was all pretty much flatter, definitely flatter than the non-grazed ones. Here's a non-grazed one there compared to the grazed one there. Almost every single one was flatter. So I'm thinking, okay, as much snow as we had up here last year, maybe the standing residue caught some more snow and it may have, the ground froze less deep, allowed it to soak in what snow it did catch, but most of the time when that happens, in that satellite imagery especially, you should be able to see fingers where that snow would have drifted and that's why I looked at the satellite imagery, you can't see that. So I didn't know exactly what was going on, but in the end it was replicated four times, looking at the amount of residue and actually the grazed area had just a tad more, 728 more pounds compared to the non-grazed area. Eight tons of old residue there, wheat straw, previous year's corn, sunflowers, et cetera, or soybeans were all there. So eight ton of residue is a tremendous amount of residue. So that wasn't it, that screwed that theory. And as we've talked about, Stan mentioned before and someone else talked about that hanging effect, several years of hanging, I've seen it with crop fields, depending on how they were farmed, management impacts on that. Was this field farmed north and south for years of the East half versus the West half or et cetera? I've talked to Thad about asking, did you take a couple of years in a row of corn silage off the East half and not the West half, et cetera, or were they broke out later or whatever? So I started looking at our imagery that we have 2016 nape, 14 nape, and this actually had to be, this was actually a cover crop again in 2014, along with 2016. 12, you notice it's all farmed the same direction, 10, 2006 we had some areas broken out down here. 1991, I went all the way back down to 1952. If anything, there was a difference in farming at East and West and not North and South. So that theory was blown out of the water that it wasn't past management impacts on that field. Okay, so then I started looking at precept data. 2016, July 1.23, August 4.26, September 3.13, October 0.57, I didn't realize it was that wet up here in those months, and these are actually his actual numbers right on the field, unfortunately, I don't have September, October, and November there, but remember when he grazed, he turned out September 22nd, pull them off October 7th. Fair amount of moisture there. Maybe, there's a snow turtle there, I won't get into that. Kind of leading up to the precept data to cover crops that had really good growth, but you don't know what happened in the spring. Way below average here, the green line is what actually happened there. Cumulative, this orange line here, brown, is actually normal, way below that. And after looking at this again, talking about that, seeing the precept data, I go, Thad, do you have precept data? Again, talking about that, seeing the precept data, I go, Thad, do you have precision planning with the down pressure option? The automatic down pressure goes, yes, I do. Give me a screenshot of that map, and there it is. The more darker the orange, the higher the down pressure the planter had to use going through that field. The lighter, yellows, greens, less down pressure. Pretty dang close to that line. Again, he was out there, it wasn't frozen. And we actually had a field day up there, we were supposed to go to the site, and it was too wet to even get to the site. Remember that, Danny? And the wind was blowing 65 mile an hour. But right in this area is where he moved that fence line. So even just six days, again, he had a quarter of grass right to the east of it. Hindsight is always 20-20. Should have pulled him off, put him over there, locked him up for a few days, let things dry out a little bit. But there had to be enough soil moisture there. When I saw this, it's obvious. Again, this is not replicated, and most of the time I listen to, I don't really care for non-replicated results. But when it's 50 bushel, guess what, guys, there's something happening there. Gotta keep in mind, get the cows off on cropland when it's not frozen and it's wet out. This is not Nebraska or Iowa, where we can turn a sprinkler on. Well, a few of you guys can, but most of us can't. So that irrigation plays a huge role in what we're potentially able to get by with. So test results between the grays versus non-grazed, grazed area, 93 bushel. Some of these, I don't know, did he take these down in that non-grazed area in that southwest corner where it was newer ground? I've seen that hundreds of times where we sample newer ground after some later fall season rain or late summer rain like we had this year and then mineralize some of that organic matter. I don't know if that's a fluke or not, but most of those zones are, I mean, I would expect more or something like this where we had more nitrogen left over in the grazed area just because we didn't translate it into yield versus where we didn't graze it. A whole different side note. Would you be planting soybeans in this field with this kind of carry-over nitrogen numbers? You raise your T yields up here by 10 bushel. How many guys are you going to do beans on all kinds of weird stuff? No? And if you're a first-time bean grower, if this was first-time beans, I would be very concerned because that soybean plant and rhizobia will not form that relationship. It needs to form it relatively early in that soybeans growth period. And if it doesn't form it, that plant may never produce the rhizobia to carry it through. Soybeans need 3.8 pounds of nitrogen per bushel. You might get it to 35. Let's just say by chance we finally start raining here and get some moisture and you have a 50 bushel yield potential. You don't have enough. That soybean plant didn't form a relationship with the rhizobia, the inoculum, and you're going to run short. Just something to think about. A soybean plant can only produce so much nitrogen for itself. Yes, it's limited, but it's... Correct. Right. But it's going to produce enough for... Usually you don't get the real responses unless you're 70 bushel plus if you've thrown on an X-ray. So around here it's going to be irrigated. So I'm not too authorary about that. We start inhibiting that soybean plant from making that relationship and we may hurt ourselves in some situations. So just work caution to make sure you know what your soil tests are and adjust accordingly. Now, this wasn't the only case where we saw some of these impacts. Lyman County there at Reliance. This is Brad Carlin's area. Same corn hybrid, obviously. No cover crop, no grazing, 131 bushel. Where we had a cover crop planted a couple weeks after this one. Had a small cover crop, 3 to 4 inches. 111 bushel, 20 bushel yield hit there. Huge cover crop, grazing, 91 bushel. These fields are all within about a mile and a half of each other. Again, it's not replicated, but it's something that's concerning me and I got my astute enough this fall that I need to really start looking at this. Especially in this part of the area. And this just happened to be... And this by chance was 100% Brassica. This was 100% turnips. They planted with the corn planter. I've yelled at these guys. I don't know how many times, three, four years in a row. Just by chance they proved me wrong the year before. It was their best producing corn. But we had rain at the right time. Rain makes a crop. It hides all the mistakes time after time. They got lucky. They did it again in the Burnham this last year. Sully County, right east of Oneida. Same corn hybrid here. No cover crop, no grazing 176. Versus one with a cover crop with no grazing 148. Substantial. Different corn hybrid. Again, the exact same area. No grazing 161. And look at this. No cover crop, but with grazing 112. Cover crop, yes. Grazing, yes, 97. Again, unfortunately this is not replicated stuff, but we need to be looking at this stuff a little bit closer. For you guys that are using cover crops, leave some check strips. Leave two or three. Preferably three or four. So if we screw up something measuring, we always have another rep to come back to to look at it. What are our options to delay planting? To delay planting that cover crop is an option. I prefer, I really don't prefer this option, but some guys usually the further soft you get like to get that crack out, that volunteer wheat, like to get a crack at cheap grass, so this may be a viable option for some. But just delay planting that cover crop by two weeks makes a huge, potentially a huge difference in amount of growth you get. Grazing versus non-grazing. Which one are you going to pick if you're a cow guy, obviously. So I don't really prefer this method, but this is an option. Planning it timely, and if things really start turning hot and dry, terminate it before the frost. A lot of you guys are doing cover crops because of CSP. If things turn hot and dry, document your rainfall, come into us. I already talked to our boss in here on. He has no issue with maybe potentially allowing you to terminate this early. Because we are behind for what cover crops have the potential to do, what we think they can do, and just what, like I showed you with that with that Dakota Lakes Research Farm stuff, took us 12 years to see that. Are these small little increments that we get from this cover crop just enough to keep the soil biology moving forward, keep building a little bit of extra carbon? Is that enough to someday get to catapult us to this next level of crop production? I don't know. I don't want to answer that for sure. But that's what we're hoping. So we're going to work with you on that. Any questions on that so far? My next topic is going to be a quick study, two different fertilizer studies at Cronin Farms. Is it good there? Cronin study, Cronin Farms had a cover crop, full season cover crop planted July 10th in 2016. It was after Tefgrass. Plenty of moisture there. It got things going good. It was a 12-way mix, very diverse sedan grass, the BMR grazing corn, the kale, to okra. You had okra in there. Well, we didn't see any okra plants, but you had okra seed in there. All kinds of different things. We wanted to know how nitrogen was going to you know, we always hear that after cover crops you're able to reduce your inputs. We wanted to see if we could make that happen. This study was replicated, and the following study I'll show you was also replicated. These are hand harvested yields, which generally are 8-10% higher than combine harvested yields. But we had fertilizer treatments out there. This slide is very busy. We had treatments in treatments out there along with how the fertilizer was put down. The bulk of the fertilizer was put down with a sprayer in stream bars on the surface running north and south. 0 gallons 20 gallons and 40 gallons wasn't it? Or 30 gallons. 0, 20, and 40. And then we had we had the starter in there of 75 pounds of mezz, so that's where this 9 pounds of nitrogen comes into play. And that was all the starter fertilizer was right with the corn seed. The sideban in dictated whether or not we had 51 pounds of actual in 2 inches beside the seed 2-3 inches beside the seed. So wherever it has a yes here we had 51 pounds flat rated right beside the seed. Our total in that we put on without the soil nitrogen in our soil nitrogen in was 30 pounds but this is just actually what commercial fertilizer was added anywhere from 9 pounds to 180. The sweet spot which we kind of calculated to be was 120 pounds of actual in produce 185 bushel corn and 9.1 percent protein. I took protein measurements of that corn just because if you're raising your own corn for feed you want to make sure you get that as high as you can. It's going to have less less supplements you're going to need down the road. But that was also the highest net return when we were looking at it economically from the price of corn being 280 the price of nitrogen being 40 cents our net return was 458 for that one. You went up to 129 pounds and it started decreasing our net return. So again the sweet spot was 120. Look how much corn we produced though basically our check. 133 bushel. That cover crop they only put down 50 pounds of actual in for that cover crop that produced 8 tons of dry material. Yep. You know another thing Casey how many days did you raise on your pad ox? Well both the stowage 25 days over it was 25 pad ox 25 days and then the we wanted to return the residue it was what many swath grade but we felt we did it everything right the snow herders the deer herders the cold herders but so anyway we saw it but the thing I liked about the whole thing Casey I'll say the same thing is everything stayed on the field but we didn't have a as far as you could go out there next spring we didn't have a compaction issue but then we were in January. Right exactly. Yeah there was no compaction whatsoever with your terrible ridiculously cold so again this study will be done exactly in the same field because it's going to be going back to corn we're going to do the exact same treatments in the exact same spots so we'll see if there's a benefit to two years after that full season cover crop is really what we're going to see I'll need to get in there and soil sample those areas to adjust accordingly which I should have did after harvest last year but it just didn't get done, sorry and that same field in a different part of that field Danny Cronins did a starter fertilizer study because as Dwayne Beck has always preached long-term low disturbance no-till we get all this mycorrhizal fungi produced and maintained do we really need starter fertilizer is really a question so this was a replicated treatment the soil test was 12 parts per million bray and he went zero pounds and then he went 37 pounds of mes and 75 pounds of mes which is 15 pounds of actual pee and the 37 pounds and 30 pounds of actual pee and the 75 pounds of product no statistical differences amongst the yield there now with that said I would not advocate cutting or eliminating with this study I would not advocate completely eliminating your pee can you cut back if your pee levels especially are in a decent category probably but again you got to remember that soil was long-term no-till and low disturbance it has to be low disturbance any of those whole type openers that you may have used 10, 15 years ago or still have it doesn't count this has to be low disturbance you have to have that mycorrhizal fungi intact long-term for this maybe to be of some benefit and we the Colex Research firm has got a new person down on board down there, Jose Guzman he's going to study it on irrigated we're pushing Duane to get it studied on dry land where it needs to be and we hope to have some results in the next three to five years one year is just not enough to make a call on it's just going to be too dependent on weather conditions and this year I wish Danny this would have been after that heavy wheat residue you know where things were cool and wet I mean not wet but cool where we had frost etc you know this was into that that crop cover crop that was grazed you know what we've seen some different results all the soil tests analysis and stuff has all been done under conventional till and SDSU realizes they need to be looking at this differently under long-term no-till situations of how we can adjust and probably cut back on some of our inputs we just need to know where