The phone dings. It’s a text message from a strange number inquiring about your hay for sale. Hesitant and a bit perplexed, you respond. After a few messages back and forth, your gut tells you something’s not quite right – it’s a scam.

Landowners may choose to replant a pasture for many reasons, including invasive plants, drought impacts, wildlife concerns or changes in the ranch operation. What to plant should always be based on established goals for the property. Do you want to solely manage for livestock forage or does wildlife hunting or viewing add to the value or recreational opportunities on your land?

Last year, I had the opportunity to attend a talk on the “Forage Toolbox” by Dennis Hancock. It reminded me there is no one right way to have a forage program, but we should continually assess all the available tools in our toolbox and use them as and when necessary to achieve our production goals.

The DewEze BeefCake twin-auger cake feeder

DewEze expanded its ag line with the release of the BeefCake feeder. BeefCake is a twin, 6-inch auger-style feeder that reduces RPMs to prevent wasteful cube damage. The chain-driven feature rotates nearly half the speed of competitive auger-style cake feeders, thus handling cubes and mixed feed equally well.

Over-seeding clovers into poor producing or grass-dominated pastures by broadcast in late winter is a practice that has been done for years usually with some level of success. Adding legumes into pasture improves grazing quality and increases the forage amount that can be removed (up to a 50 to 100 percent increase in production when using legumes as a small percentage of the grass pasture). Introducing a legume into a grass pasture can also reduce the amount of applied nitrogen fertilizer since the legume will fix nitrogen and provide the existing grass with a substantial portion of the nitrogen these components need to grow.