Playing it Smart and Safe this Harvest Season Shane Ellis, Farm Management Specialist

Long days of work are expected during harvest season. With

increased farm activity comes an increase in the risk of accidents

and injuries. A review of ways to stay safe is especially important

during this time of year. Here are some tips for staying safe this

season.

Cautiously approach field adjustments or repairs.

Take precautions to avoid slips and falls.

Make smart decisions while assigning tasks to youth.

Correctly use and maintain the slow moving vehicle

emblem, lights and signals.

Retrofit tractors with rollover structures.

Double check for motorists when turning equipment onto

or off of a public road, especially when turning to the left.

Use an extra dose of defensive driving.

Turn off tractor before attaching or detaching PTO, or

working on PTO driven equipment.

Watch for others, know where everyone is before moving

equipment or engaging augers.

While inspecting machinery during operation, use your

eyes, not your hands.

Use a safety harness and never work alone when entering

a grain bin.

IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY EXTENSION AND OUTREACH—NORTHWEST REGION OCTOBER 2015 ISSUE

Have a path of escape. Whether using machinery or

livestock, have a way to get out of harm's way.

Get some rest. Even if you can’t get a solid eight hours of

sleep at night, take a 15- 20 minute nap when drowsiness

starts to affect your judgment.

You only have one chance to be safe in any situation. There is no

rewind or reset. In speaking with emergency medical personnel

they will tell you that farm accidents commonly involve someone

doing something they knew they should not be doing or taking a

risk that they knew they should not take. It only takes a second

for a “real quick fix” to go south. Even if an injury is not fatal, it

may take months to heal. So don’t be in such a hurry that you put

yourself or others in an unsafe situation. A successful harvest is

measured not just in bushels, but in the safety and wellbeing of

everyone who worked during harvest.

Monitor Feed Closely! Beth Ellen Doran, Beef Program Specialist

Rainy conditions this summer have the potential to alter the

quality and safety of feedstuffs this fall and winter. There are

steps a livestock producer can take to help avoid a wreck.

Think back to when hay was baled this summer and what the

moisture content of the hay was. Hay baled too wet has the

potential to heat up which reduces both the available protein and

amount of energy. There is also the potential for mold and

mycotoxin growth. Check the hay for mold growth and have hay

samples run to test for nutritional content and the level of

mycotoxins. Depending on the level of mycotoxins and

production stage of the animal, the hay may be acceptable to feed

to ruminant animals. However, DO NOT feed any moldy feed to

horses!

If the plans are to harvest and feed corn silage, there are several

things a producer should do. First, inspect corn in the field prior

to harvest to determine whether there's any mold. A producer

who lived in a rain-drenched county contacted me about harvest-

ing corn that had Diplodia ear mold. Diplodia is generally a white

Extension Websites Ag Decision Maker www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/

Iowa Beef Center www.iowabeefcenter.org/

Manure Management www.agronext.iastate.edu/immag/

Iowa Pork Center www.ipic.iastate.edu/

ISU Extension and Outreach Dairy Team

FIELD FEEDLOT mold that begins forming at the base of the ear and grows toward

the tip. The good news is that Diplodia does not produce mycotox-

ins. The bad news is that if this mold is growing, there may be the

potential for other molds to also grow – some of which may pro-

duce mycotoxins.

If the plant is to be harvested as silage, use good production

practices and wait a minimum of three weeks for the silage to go

through a full fermentation before feeding. Realize that full

fermentation, inoculants and mold inhibitors will not reduce the

level of any mycotoxins that existed pre-harvest. If you suspect

there may be a potential problem, test the silage for both nutritional

and mycotoxin content after it has gone through fermentation and

before feeding.

Corn grain and screenings should also be monitored for molds and

potential mycotoxins. Because mold and associated mycotoxins are

often separated from corn grain during handling, grain screenings

from mold affected corn may very likely be high in mycotoxins.

Grain screenings should be thoroughly blended and analyzed for

mycotoxin concentrations prior to feeding.

Risk factors for high mycotoxin concentrations in corn stalks

include moldy ears, stalk rot, insect damage and lodging. Accurate

and representative sampling of cornstalks is challenging. Hence,

sampling of the grain for mycotoxins may be a better indicator of

the level of mycotoxins in the cornstalks. If the grain contains

≤ 1ppm deoxynivalenol or zearalenone or ≤ 3 ppm fumonisin, it is

probably safe to graze. If the cornstalks are to be baled, take core

samples and get an analysis for mycotoxins. Caution: avoid

bedding horses with cornstalk bales that contain mold.

So what about the test results? Mold can produce mycotoxins that

affect animal health. There are three mycotoxins commonly found

under wet conditions: deoxynivalenol, zearalenone and fumonisin.

Depending upon the specific mycotoxin and concentration level,

feed containing high levels of mycotoxins may be blended with

“clean” feed to reduce the mycotoxin concentration to a safe level.

However, many of these feeds may also have levels of molds that

reduce both the digestibility and palatability of the diet. Visual

observation, sampling and testing for both nutritional and

mycotoxin levels are essential in formulating diets that are

effective and safe for the type of animal to be fed.

As stated earlier, horses are extremely sensitive to molds and

mycotoxins. Some cattle may also be more sensitive such as sick

animals, young stock and pregnant animals. If moldy feed or feed

containing mycotoxins is fed, be sure to monitor animal health and

performance closely. And one last word – if we continue to get a

lot of moisture, monitor all stored feed for future development of

molds and mycotoxins.

For more detailed information, see the the South Dakota State Uni-

versity Extension publication, “Moldy Corn for Beef Cattle,”

accessed at: www.sdstate.edu/vs/extension/beef/upload/

ExEx2069_Moldy-corn-for-beef-cattle.pdf

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Meat Quality Dave Stender, Swine Program Specialist

Pork chop palatability is variable. One pork chop tastes different

from another and some steak is tough while another steak is

tender. While attending Iowa State University, I did a research

project that studied the meat quality differences of beefsteaks.

The purpose was to measure how good the meat tastes (called

palatability) based on the amount of marbling. Marbling is

flecks of fat interspersed within a beefsteak muscle. The USDA

Quality Grade uses marbling to grade meat into categories like

Prime, Choice and Select.

Results showed that marbling was a very poor predictor of meat

quality, especially grades of quality that are close. For example,

the taste panel had difficulty sensing any difference between

Low Choice and Select Grades. The statistics indicated that only

about five percent of the variation in palatability was due to

marbling. While conducting the research, I looked at the meat

and tried -- unsuccessfully -- to predict the palatability by color,

texture, firmness and fiber size. Research indicated tenderness

versus toughness is mostly due to the muscle structure. Some

muscle fibers break down sooner and more completely resulting

in a tender piece of meat.

The availability of a great steak starts with selecting a genetic

line of cattle with a history of high quality meat. There is

variation within breeds, so just picking a favorite breed is not a

guarantee. Cooking is the most important factor that affects

meat tenderness. When cooking, use lower heat and cook longer

but not to well done. Less well done is more tender. Red juice

on the plate is only meat juice pigment, a similar pigment that

turns blood red – but, a very different pigment.

Pork is different. Knowing what to look for in a pork chop will

help you identify high quality characteristics. The degree of

excitement that the pig experiences during handling will affect

how tough the pork chop will be. Lactic acid is released in the

muscle during intense physical events resulting in denatured

proteins (loss of water out of the meat muscle) in the pork chop.

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Meat quality experts measure the pH of the meat to determine

how much lactic acid was in the muscle. A low pH pork chop

will be tougher and tend to be dry versus a tenderer and moist

high pH pork chop. At the meat counter, a pork chop can be

identified as high or low pH by the color. Low pH pork chops

are pale while high pH, superior eating pork chops, are a dark

red color.

Similarly to beefsteak, cooking can dramatically affect the

palatability of a pork chop. Current guidelines allow cooking to

145˚ F internal temperature with a three-minute rest after

cooking. The color is pink inside the chop leaving it moist and

tender at this degree of doneness.

Another import factor in beef or pork tenderness is the cut of

meat. Great variation in palatability exists between retail cuts of meat.

In general, usually the more expensive cuts are the more tender.

Nitrogen Application in the Fall Paul Kassel, Crop Specialist.

Application of nitrogen (N) fertilizer is part of the fall

landscape in Iowa. Anhydrous ammonia applicators will start

appearing in fields in early November. Large late model tractors

will be seen pulling anhydrous ammonia bars and tanks through

many Iowa fields.

Fall application of ammonia in Iowa is a necessary part of corn

production in Iowa. The retail fertilizer industry does not have

the capacity or equipment to apply the necessary amounts of N

fertilizer for profitable corn production in the spring or early

summer.

I often hear comments from people who believe fall application

of ammonia will someday be outlawed. These comments come

from farmers as well as our urban friends. There are very few

times when I hear research data quoted in those discussions.

Those comments are centered on the idea that fall application of

anhydrous ammonia is an unsatisfactory or wasteful method of

N application. Is there is a significant loss of N from those fall

applications?

The Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy (INRS) addressed those

concerns. The INRS summarized many research projects that

evaluated fall versus spring N applications.

The summary of this research for the INRS showed a 6%

reduction in nitrate losses when moving from fall to spring

pre-plant application. However, there is an incentive to move

from fall to spring pre-plant application because the INRS

shows a 4% increase in corn grain yields.

A study conducted by John Sawyer and colleagues from 2007 to

2009 in Iowa, Illinois and Kansas shows the effect of different

application timing of anhydrous ammonia application. There is

a yield advantage to spring or sidedress anhydrous ammonia

FIELD FEEDLOT & application compared to fall application. Therefore, farmers are

encouraged to apply anhydrous ammonia in the spring or as a

sidedress application. See Table 1. However, spring field work

time constraints do not always accommodate spring anhydrous

ammonia applications.

Table 1

I often receive questions on the use of nitrapyrin as an additive to

fall ammonia applications. In Iowa, nitrapyrin is sold as N Serve

and as Instinct. The nitrapyrin decision is not easy. N Serve costs

about $11 an acre.

The INRS summarized data from nitrapyrin also. Info from the

INRS shows that “nitrapyrin in fall – compared to fall applied N

without nitrapyrin” shows a 9% reduction in nitrate-N losses.

Again there is an incentive. The INRS showed a 6% increase in

corn grain yields.

N fertilizer application is an essential component of the produc-

tion of corn on 13 million acres of Iowa farmland. Fall applica-

tion of N will be an ongoing discussion. Iowa farmers and urban

residents will continue to gain understanding of N management

and the efforts to minimize N losses.

Fall application

Spring application

Sidedress N rate pounds/acre

- - - - - - - - - yield, bushel/acre - - - - - - -

0 114 123 116

80 154 167 166

120 167 174 176

160 171 180 179

200 177 171 175

Fall Commercial Pesticide CIC — All county offices — October 21 Roadside, Forest, and Aquatic Pest Management October 29 Mosquito and Public Health Pest Management November 11 Ornamental and Turfgrass Applicators November 17 Fumigation November 18 Commercial Ag Weed, Insect and Plant Disease Management December 2 Pest Control Operators Call to Schedule Greenhouse Call to Schedule Aerial Application __________________________________________________________________________________ October 11 Juntos • Storm Lake October 14 Storm Lake Elementary PIE Partner Outreach • Storm Lake October 14 Library After School Program • Ida Grove October 15 4-H Find Out Night • Cherokee October 18 Juntos • Storm Lake October 19 Babysitting Clinic for 5th and 6th Graders • Pocahontas October 22 Grant Writing Workshop • Cherokee October 24 Vet Med Expo & Open House • Storm Lake October 24 Tomato Juice Workshop • Sac City October 25 4-H County Youth Council Meeting and 4-H Workshop • Storm Lake October 25 Juntos • Storm Lake October 26 Health Meals in a Hurry • Pocahontas and Laurens October 27 ERCERS-R • Storm Lake October 29 Clover Kids • Storm Lake November 1 4-H Enrollment Challenge Deadline • Storm Lake November 4 Newell-Fonda FCR Career Day • Buena Vista/Newell November 5 4-H Club Leader Training • Storm Lake November 5 Commercial Manure CIC Reshow • Storm Lake November 8 4-H Awards/Recognition Program • Storm Lake November 8 Robotics Club Meeting • Storm Lake November 9 ServSafe • Storm Lake

Hotlines Available For All Iowa Concern (800-447-1985) Farm On (877-BFC-1999) Teen Line (800-443-8336) BETS OFF (800-BETS-OFF • 800-238-7633)

Hotlines Available to Iowa Residents Only Families Answer Line (800-262-3804) Hortline (515-294-3108) Iowa Healthy Families (800-369-2229) PORKLine (800-808-7675)

Buena Vista County

824 Flindt Drive

Storm Lake IA 50588

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) prohibits discrimination in all its programs and activities on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, disability, and where applicable, sex, marital status, familial status, parental status, religion, sexual orientation, genetic information, political beliefs, reprisal, or because all or part of an individual’s income is derived from any public assistance program. (Not all prohibited bases apply to all programs.) Persons with disabilities who require alternative means for communication of program information (Braille, large print, audiotape, etc.) should contact USDA's TARGET Center at 202-720-2600 (voice and TDD). To file a complaint of discrimination, write to USDA, Director, Office of Civil Rights, 1400 Independence Avenue SW, Washington, DC 20250-9410, or call 800-795-3272 (voice) or 202-720-6382 (TDD). USDA is an equal opportunity provider and employer.

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