Agriculture : News
DATE: March 22, 2010
HARDIN COUNTY COOPERATIVE EXTENSION SERVICE
201 Peterson Drive
Elizabethtown, Kentucky 42701-9370
BY: Doug Shepherd
County Extension Agent for Agriculture and Natural Resources
Aquaculture Workshops:
The Kentucky State University Aquaculture Program will offer a workshop on how to control aquatic plants and algae in ponds from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. this Friday, March 26, in the Aquaculture Research Center in Frankfort.
Discussion topics include recreational pond management, aquatic plant and algae identification, methods of control and herbicide and algaecide use. The program will emphasize proper chemical selection and application techniques, applicator safety and recordkeeping.
Then, William Wurts, senior state specialist for aquaculture, will discuss the technical aspects of live hauling, or transporting live fish, at 9 a.m. Saturday, March 27, at the Aquaculture Research Center. His session will cover equipment requirements for live-hauling fish; salt use to reduce handling stress; pure oxygen use as either liquid or compressed gas; the transport of catfish fry or small fish and an update on viral hemorrhagic septicemia.
Speakers include Wurts, Forrest Wynne, state specialist for aquaculture in Graves County, and Bob Durborow, state specialist for aquaculture at Kentucky State University. For more information or to receive a copy of “Live-hauling Channel Catfish” at the workshop, contact Wurts at (270) 365-7541, ext. 200 or wwurts@uky.edu, or Wynne at (270) 247-2334 or fwynne@email.uky.edu.
New Webpage:
Our new webpage was launched this past week and we hope you’ll like the new look
and the ease in moving through all the information available there. There are several easy web addresses you can use to access the Hardin County Cooperative Extension Service home webpage: www.hardinext.org,(extension) www.hardinag.org (agriculture), www.hardinfcs.org, (Family and Consumer Sciences), www.hardin4h.org (4-H Youth Development) or www.hardinhort.org (horticulture). Any of these will get you to our home page and the wealth of information that begins there. Whether it’s the weather, custom rate pricing for various farming operations, 4H happenings, date of the next quilting class or an answer to your next gardening question, you can find it through your local Extension Office website. You can also enroll on line for all our course offerings. We’d appreciate hearing from you about our new website too!
New Publications:
Two new publications from UK Extension’s Ag Economics Department were released this past week, and should be of interest to many farmers. Both of these are available for free at the County Extension Office, or can be downloaded or accessed from our webpage.
The first is the 2010 Custom Machinery Rates Guide that provides producers with the average prices being charged for just about every machine operation performed on today’s modern farms. It even includes prices for labor on various farm activities. Equipment prices have been adjusted and based on $2.50 per gal farm diesel fuel. So if you need to know how much custom combining, baling, bush hogging or hundreds of other farm tasks might cost you, check out this publication, AEC-2010-03, “Custom Machinery Rates Applicable to Kentucky - 2010 Guide”.
The second publication deals with the profitability of nitrogen applications this spring on hay and pasture fields. This publication is listed as AEC-2010-02.
The purpose of this publication is to evaluate the potential profitability of applying nitrogen to hayfields this spring given the present market conditions. While the price of nitrogen is known with a relatively high degree of certainty at this point, the price that hay will sell for later this year is not. Consequently, a wide range of hay prices will be evaluated in this analysis. The primary objective of this publication is to help identify specific situations where applying nitrogen to spring hayfields in 2010 will prove profitable. The pub even looks comparing fields used for small square bale versus large round bales.
Educational programs of the Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service serve all people regardless of race, color, sex, age, religion, national origin or disability.
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