According to the Weather Channel, before a huge crowd filled with excitement and anticipation, and bundled up against temperatures in the 20s, a groundhog named Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow on Feb. 2 in Gobbler’s Notch, western Pennsylvania. Phil seeing his shadow means humans should expect to see six more weeks of winter, according to Groundhog Day lore.
An analysis by the National Weather Service found that over the last 20 years, Punxsutawney Phil’s forecast has been correct a paltry 35% of the time – but it remains an annual tradition. This year’s prediction comes on the heels of some of the most extreme winter weather in recent memory. Last month was the coldest January on record in the U.S. since 2014, and Jan. 21 was the second-coldest day nationally in 29 years. Winter Storm Enzo set snowfall records across parts of the South, including more than nine inches in the Florida Panhandle. All 50 states in the U.S. experienced snow (if we include Hawaii’s snow-capped peaks).
Here’s a little Phil trivia: The word “woodchuck” is an English corruption of the Algonquin word “otchek” (actually translates to “fisher” or “marten”). Woodchucks, also called groundhogs, zoologically belong to genus Marmota (marmot in regular English). In Germany, where the forecasting legend originated, “Murmel” in German (pretty close to our English term) is what those Europeans call woodchucks.
At the recent Groundhog Day ceremony, Weather Channel viewers saw a Punxsutawney Phil Inner Circle spokesperson, wearing a formal top hat, reach into Phil’s den and grab a scroll allegedly written by the rodent. The human read the document as follows: “No matter how you measure, it’s six more weeks of winter.” Then the crowd cheered.
Just how accurate Phil’s prophecy is annually, in terms of practical matters – like when legumes can be frost-seeded – remains debatable. Perhaps a more meaningful date, agriculturally, is the day before Groundhog Day. Old-timers believed that on Feb. 1 livestock farmers should have half of their starting winter’s hay inventory left. Most of them began grazing programs in early May. At most Northeast locations, if cattle started grazing earlier than that time – with no supplemental human-harvested forage – there was a good chance that paddocks would be overgrazed, unless pastures were super-abundant. This meant that the recovery period for the sites in question would be longer than desired.
Most grazing experts stress that paddocks shouldn’t be grazed any shorter than four inches’ height. When standing forages are about to become shorter than that, there’d better be other paddocks with a lot more chow to move livestock to. If we respect this height minimum, recovery period shouldn’t run more than three to four weeks, assuming soil fertility and moisture are not limiting.
Interestingly, that four-inch minimum height (according to many deep-thinking agronomists) applies to the stand health of perennial crops and regrowing winter annuals as well as millets, sorghums and sudangrasses. In worst case scenarios – ones in which forage inventories on Feb. 1 are much less than half of what the farmer had on Halloween – one or both of two things usually takes place. First, pastures start getting grazed prematurely and/or aggressively.
Second, in order for pastures not to be ravaged by grazing ruminants, their owner ends up buying hay at a time well past the point when good supplies of “milky” hay were still available. Learned grazing experts can show that supplementing purchased hay to grazing cattle, rather than burning out overly short swards, will trigger a four-fold return on investment in terms of quantity of harvestable forage later in the grazing season.
Even if the coldest day of the ongoing winter is past, we can still put to good use whatever lingering cold weather remains. Many dairy persons may own, or have access to, some dry, fair quality, so-called “heifer/dry cow hay.” Why would this hay be good for milking cows? A real-life benefit of very cold weather is that it’s a good time to feed some lower quality roughages to cattle. When folks complain about cows voraciously chowing down forages in extra cold weather, I explain that cattle (and sheep and goats) are basically ruminating furnaces. Cold weather is the best time to feed more fibrous, lower-energy feed to ruminants. If they acquire warmth from this fiber – something nutritionists call heat increment – this means they will be tapping into less energy otherwise destined to support milk production. With these lower quality forages, we’re smart to test them to verify their protein and mineral status.
In the Jan. 29 edition of Country Folks there were 28 ads for hay crops (five of them organic). It’s very wise for livestock owners to take inventory of their forages sooner rather than later to determine if their roughage supply is adequate. They should contact these hay sellers and get them to agree to test their hay if forage test results aren’t already available. Trusting that grazeable pasture will be available when it’s supposed to be or that hay now being advertised will still be available when Old Man Winter persists longer than normal is too much chance-taking in an already risky business.
A little-known method for stretching forages comes from feeding monensin to lactating dairy cows, a practice which was approved about a quarter century ago by the FDA. Monensin improves feed efficiency, allowing cows to make the same amount of milk while consuming less feed. Sometimes the cows on monensin eat the same amount of feed and just give more milk – kind of a win-win situation.
Monensin works by keeping some of the carbon in the cow’s diet that would otherwise be belched off as methane (a greenhouse gas). This retained carbon is in the form of carbohydrates and fatty acids that the cow can use.
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