With agricultural producers coming off the worst drought in recorded history, making plans for this year must have been difficult.
Usually, by this time of the year, area farmers and ranchers have tentative plans made on what they’re going to plant and how they’re going to operate.
“We were below average, there’s no doubt about that. We were probably a little bit over a third, close to 40% of what we normally make.”
Terrell Weise farms and ranches in Milam and Williamson counties.
“I don’t want to do it again. It was very tough. It was on all facets, row crop, yes the price for row crops, corn, milo, was tremendous, but I think I’d rather take a little less per bushel, and make a whole lot more per acre.”
Weise said that although there crop yields were off, they were able to bale the corn and milo stubble to feed to his cattle.
“I have to say that we have to value the round bales that we got in behind that row crop just as well for the cattle operation. We didn’t have to buy the square bales or the round bales from anybody else.”
The recent rains were well received.
“We cleaned out a number of tanks for our cow/calf operation. Well, we’ve had 10 or so inches of rain since then. They’re basically all full. It looks tremendous now for the water operation.”
We asked what he expected to be planted in his area this year.
“If we stay rain like this, those boys will probably still stick it in corn. You can use much more herbicides on it, it stands in the weather when you want to harvest it, and it will make more per acre if it’s an average or above average rainfall year.”
Weise usually plants a corn and milo rotation.
“It’s still probably a 60/40 on the percentages of corn to milo. Yes, we did plant a little more wheat. Yes we did plant a little oats this year. We did have a market for oats for people wanting to buy oats just to over seed the pasture that was next to nothing and they’re over seeding the pasture just to get quick on the hay baling, or quick on the grazing.”
And how much rain is too much rain?
“We love it when it rains, and we can make more money in the mud than we can in the dust. We’ve tried it in the dust for a couple of years. We need to try it in the mud for a while.”
I’m Kailey Carey, looking at Brazos Valley agriculture, From The Ground Up.
