If you think your lawn looks burned out by the dry summer weather, just imagine what’s happening to hundreds of acres of slow-growing hay that farmers need to feed their cows and other livestock.
Many farmers in what the U.S. Drought Monitor says are in moderate to severely dry conditions in Franklin County are in their second or third hay cuttings this season — some reporting their yield of winter forage cut in half.
And some, pointing to what’s been a hard year because of low milk prices, are worried they’ll have to pay higher prices to feed their herds over winter.
“There are certainly people who are very nervous about the amount of feed they may have for their farm,” said Darryl Williams of Luther Belden Farm in Hatfield, who grows 120 acres of hay and about 180 acres of feed corn.
“The first cutting was as good as we’ve had in years, but the second and third cuttings have been reduced,” said Williams Friday at the Massachusetts Association of Dairy Farmers annual picnic at Sunderland’s Mount Toby Farm. “We’re probably off by 50 percent on some fields.
Although he won’t know about the corn crop until it’s harvested, Williams guesses the yield could be off by more than 50 percent on some sandy fields, and it could be off by 10 to 20 percent even in fields that may look pretty good.
“I’ve talked to some farmers who are chopping up sweet corn for heifer feed, or looking for other alternatives,” said Williams, who plans to plant oats on a field he rotates with a tomato grower to make up for lost grain production.
“It’s been a very low price year,” he added. “The drought makes things more stressful this year. A lot of farmers are worried about the price of feed, where they’ll find feed and how they’re going to pay for it.”
Deerfield dairy farmer Peter Melnik, whose Bar-Way Farm grows about 150 acres of hay, expects that crop to be about half what it is typically. And while it’s principally to feed Bar-Way’s own herd, he’s been getting calls from other farmers in search of feed.
“The second and third cutting was almost non-existent,” he said. “There’s sort of a trickle-down effect: Guys who rely on pasture, there’s no pasture, so then they start feeding hay instead of feeding that hay in winter, they’re feeding it now. So what are they going to feed this winter?”
Melnik, who also grows 350 acres of feed corn, says he expects that crop to be off by 25 percent or more, depending on soil type.
Some farmers, like Williams and Leyden’s Warren Facey, say the’re helped by having some corn silage remaining from last year’s banner crop.
But he said that after his family’s Bree-Z-Knoll Farm’s 150 acres of hay yielded a good first cutting in May, there was only 40 acres for a second cutting.
“The rest of it is still waiting for rain,” he said.
State Food and Agriculture Commissioner John Lebaux told the dairy farmers Friday, “Drought is the elephant in the room” and that he’s been having conversations with other state officials about ways the state may be able to help.
“In certain parts of the state, it’s an awful situation,” he said. “Every day that it doesn’t rain makes it worse.”
And not only dairy farmers are affected.
“The drought has really affected us because we depend totally on the grass,” said Carolyn Wheeler of Wheel-View Farm in Shelburne, which raises about 135 beef cattle.
After a “pretty good” first cutting of hay, Wheeler said, the second cutting produced only about half the typical yield.
And because the pasture has been so dry, she and her husband are considering feeding their grass-fed cattle hay earlier this fall “unless we get some rain and pastures come back soon. Some years, we’ve purchased feed from other farmers, but that gets very expensive.”
Ultimately, the availability of feed could affect whether the farm needs to reduce its herd size, Wheeler said.
James Graves, whose family grows about 550 acres of hay in East Shelburne, Colrain and Greenfield, says that instead of getting about 50 bales per acre, the average now for the second cut is about 35 bales.
If there’s a flip side to the dryness, Williams said, “This year, we’re in places we normally can’t get into that are a little bit swampy. This year, when we went through, the tires never even got wet. Sometimes we leave 12, 10 acres that we don’t even touch on a normal year.”
But even though the rain that’s fallen sporadically over the past couple weeks has helped, farmers like Wheeler said there needs to be a lot more to provide enough feed to last through winter.
“The rain we had greened things up a lot,” she said, but I hope we can get rain consistently from now through the fall to grow more hay.”
You can reach Richie Davis at: rdavis@recorder.com
or 413-772-0261, ext. 269.