MWFW 3/18/2023 EDIT

foreign family community this is Midwest Farm weekly good morning I'm Elaine Wells and welcome to Midwest Farm weekly on the show today 4-H summer camp options from cooking to archery crime scene investigating to space exploration we have all of the details on joining the fun plus preserving your cover crops to feed as alternative forage is a bunker better than a bag and group calf care with automated feeding we're going to look at the benefits When local Farm is reaping to this Progressive management style last week we took you on a tour of Meadowbrook dairy farms in Manitowoc County and today as mentioned we are exploring their calf management style that is leading to healthier animals one of the best things I like about working here is just being able to experience different breeds come here um and just for me a lab it's also learning about the different breeds but I notice a lot of calves are a lot healthier in ventilated areas and they actually do grow a lot better so it's just a different opportunity to learn more and experience it Lindsay rotter is an expert in raising cabs my passion for calves comes a lot from my home grow and dairy farm I've the third generation in our home my mother took care of a lot of calves and I learned a lot from her and from working with veterinarian clinics so that's where my passion comes and it's something I'm actually really good at she takes over their care at Meadowbrook shortly after birth calves are born I get them when they're about two three hours old they're in individual pens until about five days old and then they go into a big group housing feed system this feed system allows them to drink whenever they want a lot of it is also on my end with cleaning making sure any new calves are able to walk into the feed system and then once they're able to figure that out then I just let them be on their own they find an automated feed system gives calves the best rate of growth a chance to eat when they are hungry so in the milk system we are feeding currently 60 percent waste milk which again I get from the milkers I have two pasteurizers one is just a cooling taxi and then I have our main pasteurizer which is a westward in our calf Barn that gets pasteurized to 145 degrees Fahrenheit which then sits at that temperature for about half an hour and then it cools down to 60 which then is transferred over to our milk jug which is connected to our feed system in the feed system again 60 waste milk with 40 percent powdered milk replacer that is specifically for this feed system younger calves do get a product called summon X which again the feed system adds on its own it's just to help with salmonella and just make sure that they you know help grow we are all still using an accelerate product that helps with lungs again that's another thing lungs and rate of gains there is still plenty of Hands-On care so the biggest thing I monitor in the winter is how are they drinking on the feed system a lot of issues we have is the respiratory but that's one big reason why we also put cap jackets on our calves they stay on until either either too big or be weather all calves three weeks and older have a lung ultrasound performed by the vet we put alcohol on their lungs and we use ultrasound system and it's a way to catch pneumonia before it actually is physically present to our eyes Lindsay and the farm owners believe strong herd Health begins at Birth the biggest I'm proud of when it comes to these calves is just watching them grow up and seeing them come back into the Parlor you can see part one of our story on Meadowbrook dairy farms in the midwest Farms section of we aregreenbay.com keep an eye out for some new road signs in our state the goal is to point people in the direction of agricultural tourism opportunities organizers say it's the next step in establishing Wisconsin as America's agriculture tourism destination the metal signs include a URL and a QR code they're going to be easily visible and heavily traveled spots at rest areas Travelers will be directed to Wine Growers petting zoos Orchards and more you know weed control is one of the greatest challenges farmers face there is a solution rolling into fields that uses a laser to Target the trouble spots I had the chance to see it in action at World egg Expo this is the card robotics one and only laser weeder we kill weeds in the field with lasers a common combination of AI and cameras that detect them and then we target those weeds with really high powered lasers and burn them out in the field the machine can weed around two acres per hour it is designed to work primarily with specialty crops and veggies a lot of onions broccoli cauliflower lettuces spinaches spring mix we do all kinds of stuff like radishes Growers who use carbon robotics implements are seeing up to 80 percent Savings in weed management costs with a break even period of one to three years farmers are excited by it because we can kill your weeds with no herbicide spray no manual labor no you don't need to cultivate it's incredibly incredibly effective a lot more effective than something like cultivation which will leave a bunch of the weed seeds around and so and it's all automatic computer vision tracking and tackling the weeds and burning them out the technology can operate day or night in virtually all weather conditions with millimeter accuracy consumers are excited by it because you can get healthy food much more cost effectively we don't have to worry so much about all the chemicals and herbicides that are getting into our food supply we don't have to worry about all the chemical runoff of what it's doing to the environment people don't have to worry about over cultivation which is stripping our top soil you know they say we have 50 years left of good topsoil in this country so something like laserweeder helps to sustain the environment company is also expanding to use that laser system for thinning crops still to come getting those cover crops off the field at the right time we'll look at the important factors when you plan to use those cover crops for feed well Jeremy Hansen here from Fox Valley Technical College for life on the farm and joining me today is Bill Eberly Bill thank you so much for your time today hey it's my pleasure great to be here you know we're at our Calumet County forage Council annual meeting and you are one of our key speakers today and you had some really neat topics to talk about regarding cover crops and and what to do with the forages from the cover crops and but first can you tell me you know where you're from and what you do sure I'm Bill Eberle I'm from omro uh over near Oshkosh I work for Christian Hansen been there for almost five years and we're a Danish owned company headquartered here in Milwaukee and we make half of the cheese in the world is started with our cultures and so we also make Animal Health Products we also make forage inoculants right and your talk today was actually on preserve properly preserving forages but specifically like cover crops and alternative forages yeah which is like the key topic yeah absolutely it's uh ever it's growing ever more popular in eastern Wisconsin as far as doing cover crops and then sort of marrying that with forage production uh so farmers are always wanting to be more and more sustainable and one of the ways to do that is to plant cover crops uh take that corn crop off and get something green growing there and think of all the all the positive environmental benefits and soil Health you preserve those nutrients preserve the nutrients that we might put on with manure so it's a great practice and some of the key topics that you did talk about today are Concepts that I generically tell everyone and the first being you know Harvest your crops at the right stage of growth so yes we had we talked about that today and uh uh you know amusingly enough I said when we talked about well who should I talk to about when to harvest my crop I put a picture of a weatherman up there and the reason I did is because boy I think finding yourself a weather window to harvest those spring crops is just as important as it is getting the perfect growth stage of uh or or so more so from a agronomic standpoint uh these things can be pretty touchy and if it's up to me if it's my farm I'd much rather have a crop put up at the right moisture and not rip my field up trying to do it in preparation for putting corn in there the next the following day or the following week so I think it's almost just as important to harvest when the weather allows us as it is a stage of maturity and a good my generic recommendations would be the right stage of growth the right moisture or dry matter and then the the final thing is to preserve it correctly you talked a little bit about preserving cover crop forages in structures yeah elaborate yeah so I would venture to guess what the vast majority of the tons of alternative forage in eastern Wisconsin are going in bunkers and piles and obviously we want to do that correctly even the better the more positive uh management practices we do the better chance we have to make better forage the more of it we're going to preserve and the less issues we're going to have and so one of the challenges is getting the right actual dry matter level of the feed when it's going into that pile or that bunker and the closer we start to get to one edge of the spectrum of too wet or too dry the more we really really really got to be on our game and make sure everything's getting packed final questions you had one more comment on storing forages and bags yeah it's still widely done it's still common my thoughts today when I was uh talking to the group was simply that in my job and looking at all these different bags and piles and bunkers I've been surprised that the compaction in a bag isn't quite what it is in a pile or a bunker so again going back to knowing that knowing we're not going to quite get the compaction in a bag we just got to make sure we've got all our bases covered bill you know thank you so much for your time today it's my pleasure really enjoyed listening to your presence I had a great time and it was a great crowd today so yeah thanks for having me thank you so for life on the farm I'm Jeremy Hansen I hope the forage Council used a picture of meteorologist Alexis staniak because that is who I check with before harvesting my crops no so sweet I'm definitely not a weatherman so maybe not me but hey as of this week we have had 63 and a half inches of snowfall for a season so far well above that average for this time of year of almost 48 inches and overall well above how much we saw in this past year at this time in 2022 of 38.2 inches now as of this week we have about a foot of snowfall still left on the ground a lot of melting to go to get rid of that and then off to our West look at Minnesota and North Dakota even Eastern South Dakota quite a bit of snowfall on the ground towards Milwaukee not as much but heading into the next 10 days I think we will still see more snow accumulation it's likely to be more mixed showers as we are warming up by the end of March but then further to our North quite a bit of a snowstorm to come through up in the U.P within the next week and a half now we're looking at more liquid precipitation for this time of year to come through I think within the next week and a half we will see about an inch of rainfall come through here in Green Bay close to a an inch over in Minneapolis and as well down in Chicago now all of this is excuse me increasing our drought perspective so we're still above where we should be for this time of year here in Green Bay as well as in Wausau way above where we should be over in Rhinelander and often Minnesota there we're finally above where we should be drought wise now heading into the next eight to 14 days the climate Prediction Center has put us in this above normal category for a precipitation below normal further two hours south and west into the next week we're going to start to see a rise in temperatures as well this weekend fairly cold as a cold front came through Thursday night dropping our temperatures then look at the official start of spring temperatures back into the mid to upper 40s can't complain and I think that we're going to stay with those more average temperatures as we continue into the next eight to 14 days further to our West in this very cold area but that is finally exited from where we are here in Wisconsin and then to our South starting to see that warm up again as well so even into the next three months I think we're going to be right around average so can't complain the rest of this year so overall heading into the rest of March our temperatures are back to average and precipitation wise we are above average stay with us more AG stories after the break thank you they are works of art made in a small town had held together by Simple Wood Glue yet they are starting to get attention worldwide our sister station in Minnesota brings us the story of a farmer finding a niche in woodworking people here are nice and friendly so I enjoy this area Raymond is known as a close-knit community a mostly quiet town but you will hear the sound of semi trucks and then you'll hear the sound of wood being turned into semi trucks you never imagined as a kid working on those little models that this would be your career well I I always figured I'd be on on a farm doing what I love Aaron zenner was raised on a dairy farm as a kid in between chores he began building crude tiny models just for fun but as the years went by his talent really started to come out of the woodwork I had a friend ask me to build a model of his semi and that was my my first actual customer a very satisfying customer and that was seven years ago after that word spread like a prairie fire pretty soon Aaron was getting recognized for his painstaking attention to detail there's not a single screw in here no no Nails no screws just wood glue most of what he makes in his garage is miniature farm machinery trucks tractors combines and silage Choppers but he's also made an ambulance and once just because he likes the challenge Aaron built a construction crane it took him six thousand 200 wood pieces to finish almost 20 feet tall it's massive on average it takes him about 32 hours to build one model he often starts with a toy to help calculate the dimensions then he draws a Blueprints and goes to work with his table saw his scroll saw and his drill press most of what he uses is Heartwood that he gets from an Amish lumber yard in Ohio I can do red purple yellow and orange woods and then various shades of brown instead of using gains or dies his mother nature when he finishes tractor he'll leave it in dividend which will turn the color of the wood from red to orange it's a different kind of farm work which makes sense because his biggest fans are farmers breathtaking I mean it I never expected it to be what it was and his work is just boards can't explain it it's incredible you know and I living down the street you know you see the lights on in his house any time of the day you know making each one of these individual pieces recently a Machinery manufacturer in Germany even asked for some of his work but as good as Aaron is he does have his limits if somebody said Aaron can you do U.S Bank Stadium and all the states inside what would your reaction be to that I would say no hard no so he sticks with what he knows best it's not exactly the farm career he envisioned but it might be even better people are just amazing it's all over the world so it's pretty crazy absolutely beverage he works about 11 hours of our models you can find his work on the page is called time to start thinking summer camp because registration is open for a number of fun events offered through Brown County 4-H Melinda Pollan is a 4-H Youth Development educator here with all the details good morning to you good morning thanks for having me always a fun time of year we got to start planning ahead though because we know how busy Summers get we do I also know how busy parents are and we're starting to think about what summer looks like already it's right around the corner right we just heard spring is coming so that means summer will be here too now is the time to start thinking about what we're going to do with our kids this summer what a fun learning activities we can do you have a packed summer we can choose a la carte we can choose many of them talk a little bit about the wide range of classes you offer yeah so we have a a bunch of different camping opportunities for kids and a lot of different topics our goal this summer was really to give them Adventures to see if they're going to spark an interest in any of our topics so the way that our camps are set up this this year is that we have a morning camp and an afternoon Camp Monday Tuesday Wednesday so a morning camp with one topic an afternoon camp with another so kids can spend the entire day with us pack their lunch stay with us for the day drop them off in the morning and they'll learn two different topics morning and afternoon or just come for the one that kids are really interested in certainly the goal is to find that spark in 4-H do I have to be a current member to sign up you don't of course we would love to have all of our 4-H members come out with us but this is also an opportunity for you to try on 4-H see if it's a good opportunity for you to learn for you to grow and to and to join us maybe in the future 4-H has a fantastic mission of setting kids up for career exploration talk a little bit about some of the things on this table that might fit that yeah absolutely we really are looking at how do we spark an interest in a potential Deep dive learn career choice future whatever that might be for our young people so we tried to give a wide breath of it we have crime scene camps that really looks at the science of things so we teach them how to lift fingerprints and we have them do powder analysis and really getting into the chemical sides of that DNA extraction we have a foodie camp that really is number one delicious yeah right but it also teaches kids the basics of culinary skills and that could be a career choice for some of our young people as well it's also a degree program at uwgb so it's a nice partnership there we have other things like elect we have one of our Tech time camps this summer that's really looking at Tech so 3D printing electromagnetics well we're looking at this picture can I ask about cardboard cardboard Camp one of our most fun camps we did that one that was a couple of years ago that was cardboard uh where we made cardboard kind of cities and they had to create their own armors uh this year's Miss and mythical creature so it's a little different theme we try to mix up the same topic but different themes so if you were there last year we did cardboard City we did cardboard arcade games this year is mythical creatures so they'll be creating their own mythical creature with that as well I'm having fun playing as well talk to me about this battery situation yeah so what this is part of our Tech time camp and it is an electromagnetic field so there's batteries at the bottom that are powered that are into the battery itself so it's going to pull the electrons up and out through the conductor of the wire so the wire is hits the top of the bottom of the battery and then comes back down and gets really close to those bottom batteries what what happens is if you were to lift that up right now and put the place where it's touching right in the middle of the battery it'll spin creating an electromagnetic field how cool is that there's a lot more to this than I can even remotely talk about we've got experts that teach this course I can do the basics of it but come to the course that will teach the kids all about electromagnetic fields which is a huge topic also in a lot of our work of world ages that we are targeting for most of these camps yeah most of our camps are great four and up um the majority of our camps are that we have we have two camps that are grades five and up just because a little more technology and skill based and then we do have two camps for kindergarten through third graders as well so really the whole breadth of Ages this summer we would love for you all to come out and join us well you need to register right now pick one pick them all it is a Summer full of 4-H fun we're gonna have all of the options on our website you can click there and get signed up right from our home page you can just click on the news Tab and look for Midwest Farm on we are greenbay.com you guys even got

your hands on the newest Lego robot we do these are the these are the uh this new Spike primes this is an upgrade from what we had the last year so this is our first year of these come out and learn with us as we introduce you to the new Spike Prime thanks Melinda you bet

2023-03-20 20:37

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