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Grape Harvest Tips
According to Kimmel Orchard Manager Caleb Wehrbein, grapes are a fun project for home gardeners. On today’s Almanac, he shares key points to keep in mind when harvesting grapes.
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[Brad Mills, Program Host]
Nebraska Extension Almanac.
As we head into the fall, commercial and home grape growers will be looking to do some harvesting soon.
There is a difference when it comes to table grapes and wine grapes as to the proper timing to commit to harvesting.
Kimmel Orchard manager, Caleb Orbean, talks about timing, equipment, and ideal environmental conditions for table and wine grapes.
[Caleb Werhbein, Kimmel Orchard Manager]
The difference between table grapes and wine grapes is that wine grapes will usually carry thicker skin on them.
A lot of growers leave them out in the field to accumulate a higher sugar content.
That's kind of helpful for winemaking, and wine grapes usually carry a seed in them.
When we talk about table grapes, we're thinking about kind of larger grapes that lact the seed and are thinner skinned and more pleasant for eating.
When we're thinking about wine grapes, there's a few tools that growers use to determine what the appropriate timing is for harvesting their grapes.
A lot of growers will use a refractometer to measure the bricks content, or the sugar content of the grapes to kind of help them during the wine making process.
Other growers can test for titratable acidity, or other factors that will kind of help them determine when the opportune time to harvest us.
So when we're talking about actually physically harvesting the grape, will you go in with pruning shears to cut out clusters at a time from the vine rather than picking out individual berries.
If you're a home grower, growing wine grapes for maybe home brewing, the weather and the timing of your harvest can kind of help you improve your grape quality when you actually go into the wine making process.
So, what you'll want to do is, you'll want to harvest the grapes earlier in the morning during when it's cooler conditions, because heat will speed up the spoilage process on your grapes.
So if you pick them early in the morning, or pick them and get them on ice in a cooler pretty quick, that can help preserve their shelf life.
When we think about kind of the harvest timing window, It's helpful to look for indicators that the crop is ready.
You'll notice as you go through the growing season, When they're actually on the grapevine, they're small, hard, and usually green grapes.
And as the season goes on, these berries will grow in size.
The berries will often get softer, and usually there's a change of color that comes around with them.
That's called verace, and that can help growers kind of indicate when they're about to harvest, or when they're ready to harvest.
With wine grapes, while they're sitting on the vine longer, you might be susceptible to wildlife pressure that might eat the grapes early.
So, in order to protect from birds or insects, growers can use bird netting to help exclude birds from eating the grapes early.
Or sometimes we see growers, put up, like, strings and CDs, kind of motion to deter birds away from the vine.
Commercial vineyards can also use sound machines to scare birds away.
When we think about protection from insect pressure.
This usually involves chemical protection throughout the season so that they're not damaging the developing grape berries.
While we think about harvest kind of later in the season.
We can also do some things earlier in the season that can help accelerate kind of that harvest timing or the quality of grapes harvested.
What we can do during the early part of the summer is come into the great canopy and thin it out.
So this will improve airflow in your grape canopies and reduce disease pressure, while also exposing the grape clusters to sunlight, which will help with their improving their quality, sugar content, and making them harvestable at an earlier timing.
Weather can be an important factor, too.
When we think about rainfall, that can dilute sugars in the grapes.
So if you're worried about having a higher sugar content in your grape for wine making, if there are, if there's rain in the forecast, you might want to go out and harvest those grapes earlier, so that a lot of water doesn't seep into that berry and dilute the sugars.
[Brad Mills, Program Host]
For Nebraska extension almanac, I'm Brad Mills.
Nebraska Extension Almanac is a production of i.e. And our media, and Nebraska Extension.
For more information on how your university is serving Nebraskans, go to extension.unl.edu.
Cow Calf Nutrition Challenges Part 1
Challenging environmental conditions have forced cattle producers to make difficult decisions. Extension Cow/Calf Systems and Stocker Management Specialist Karla Wilke discusses strategies to help producers make sound choices when feed and forage are in short supply.
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[Brad Mills, Program Host]
Nebraska Extension Almanac.
Nebraska producers have faced many challenges with feeding their cows this season, including extended and severe drought, and wildfires earlier this spring.
On today's program, extension specialist Carla Wilkie talks about some of those challenges and points out some of the difficult decisions producers need to make.
[Karla Wilke, Nebraska Extension Cow/Calf and Stocker Management Specialist]
So Calcalf producers are faced with those issues of having reduced hay production and range quality and range quantity.
And so some of those options here that people are starting to think through in late August, are early weaning, um, and possibly confinement feeding, um, maybe confinement feeding pairs, but probably, uh, confinement feeding the mama cow with the calf removed.
Um, to try to save their feed resources for late gestation and early lactation next spring, because we'll have a period of time there where we're still waiting to go to green grass in June that those cows will once again have a high requirement for nutrition.
Um, and so they need to be, a lot of them are really struggling with the feed resources that they would have to get them through the winter and whether they will have those speed resources and whether they should send them somewhere to be fed for a while, um, to get them through.
So, um, a lot of people shy away from early weaning.
They don't like the results of early waning, and I think that some of our expertise and extension can maybe help them with that ease their concerns about that.
And one of the things that people don't like about early waning is that they tend to not get the gain on those calves, that they would have gotten out on grass and still getting milk from the cow.
And we can replace that with distillers and corn or some soybean meal, some alfalfa hay.
So, a higher quality diet for that calf, while he's, when he's early weaned, as opposed to what we might feed that calf as a ration at a normal weaned, we might only want, um, a pound and a half day gain on a normal weaned calf, which might be 180 days, 200 days of age.
We take an early weaned calf that's 100 to 120 days of age.
And we're going to want to replace that milk, um, nutrition because we want that same rate of gain that he would have been getting on the cow.
And so that can help producers a lot to think through some of that, um, taking those higher quality feeds and and putting them through that calf.
Um, The other thing related to early weaning is some of them don't have a way to keep the cap.
They have to sell the ball in calf.
And so, um, I would highly recommend they work with their veterinarian and see if they need to, um, bump up their vaccination schedules so that we get the preconditioning shots in them, um, get that calf set up for a good weaning experience for someone else who might be selling them.
Um, there, there may be because they're selling less weight.
There could be a little bit of a discount there.
But at the same time.
They need to be thinking through if you leave that cap on that cow and she becomes thin and she may be bred now, but she has a horrible winner.
Um, goes into lactation again in the spring of 27 and she's thin and she's behind.
Does she get bread in the spring in the summer of 27.
So, it's you're making a decision now that's going to impact things way down the road.
And so I really encourage people to think through what their options are to do the best thing long term.
[Brad Mills, Program Host]
Stay tuned for future programs, where Carla continues to focus on helping producers make good decisions when it comes to keeping their cows and calves fed, by focusing on early weaning.
For Nebraska extension almanac.
I'm Brad Mills.
Nebraska Extension Almanac is a production of INR media and Nebraska Extension.
For more information on how your university is serving Nebraskans, go to extension.unl.edu.
Cow Calf Nutrition Challenges Part 2
On today’s program, Extension Cow/Calf Systems and Stocker Management Specialist Karla Wilke continues discussing feed and forage options for cow/calf operations during challenging environmental conditions. Today, she focuses on one strategy involving early weaning.
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[Brad Mills, Program Host]
Nebraska Extension Almanac.
On part one of this discussion of nutrition challenges for Calcalf Operations, extension specialist Carla Wilkie detailed some of the problems facing producers in Nebraska.
Extended drought and wildfires have made nutrition issues for producers very difficult.
On today's program, Carla continues to focus on helping producers make good decisions.
[Karla Wilke, Nebraska Extension Cow/Calf and Stocker Management Specialist]
When it comes to keeping their cows and cats fed by focusing on early weaning.
So if we do early wean, then we take lactation away from that cow.
We literally drop her energy requirements in half.
So that makes what we feed her to get her through the winter much easier now because at this point, hopefully she's bred, but she's only 2nd trimester, um, no lactation.
She's got a very low energy requirement.
And so we could possibly feed her in confinement of a fairly low energy dense ration, and we could maintain her through the winter fairly easily, um, with that.
Um, we could limit feed her some higher quality feeds, but not give her everything she wants and that could be a cheaper diet too, and confinement.
So that might be something to think about.
Um, just sending her out, farming her out, so to speak, to a custom lot.
Might be something that would pencil out because it would allow ranchers to save what little hay that they did manage to put up on their meadows or on their dry land acres, whatever they had.
Um, and and bring in supplement for after she goes into late gestation and then into lactation.
And so, it's really kind of a, um, moving pieces, puzzle pieces around on a board kind of, um, concept.
If I send her here and use these resources over here, I could save these resources and I could put them over here and this could make this fit down the road.
And so it's just really thinking through all those options and putting a pencil to that.
[Brad Mills, Program Host]
Carla says drought conditions have forced producers to look at unconventional means to keep their operation profitable.
[Karla Wilke, Nebraska Extension Cow/Calf and Stocker Management Specialist]
Lots of things are unconventional and lots of things are um, something they've never done before.
So a lot of people, For example, after the fires, they've had to send bread heifers out.
That was that was the easiest, you know, they didn't want to mess with the pairs, but they didn't have room for everybody.
So they sent the bread heifers somewhere.
Something to be, for them to be thinking through as if those are later bread, they would, the bull might just be, still be with them or the bull might just be being pulled.
It's very important that we not move those heifers for 30 days after the bull's pulled so that we get that embryo set, if we do a lot of transport and stress on those animals, we could lose that embryo.
And a lot of people don't think about that because it's this is not their normal system.
So they don't normally wouldn't normally be transporting at this point because they wouldn't have them somewhere, you know, in a, in a lot or something.
And so there's a lot of things that we're having to do this year that, as you mentioned, it's very unconventional.
It's very different from what they normally do.
And so, um, think through the system, every decision that we make now has an impact somewhere down the road, and we definitely need to do, um, some thinking about if I do this, how does it impact this?
But by the same token, if I don't do anything, what's it going to do down here?
And so sometimes the decision paralysis is a little overwhelming because we're not sure what to do.
But no decision is still a decision.
And no decision and just letting things play out is worse than our 2nd best decision.
So sometimes we're afraid because if we don't, if we do this and it wasn't the very best thing I should have done for these cows, it could still be better than just trying to let things play out in chaos.
So that would be my, that would be my advice, is, is make a plan and implement it because it's better than no plan.
[Brad Mills, Program Host]
For Nebraska Extension Almanac.
I'm Brad Mills.
Nebraska Extension Almanac is a production of IANR media, and Nebraska Extension.
For more information on how your university is serving Nebraskans, go to extension.unl.edu.
Vitamin A in Cow/Calf Production Part 1
Nebraska Extension Beef Systems Specialist Mary Drewnoski says producers should pay closer attention to their cattle’s vitamin A intake, which offers many health benefits, including strengthening immune systems.
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[Brad Mills, Program Host]
Nebraska Extension Almanac.
One of the most important vitamins in a beef cow's diet is vitamin A. Nebraska extension specialist Mary Dronowski says, cattle can't get the vitamin A they need, from the typical feed they get on a daily basis, particularly in drought conditions.
She begins today's program by talking about vitamin A's role in a cow's immunity.
[Mary Drewnoski, Nebraska Extension Beef Systems Specialist]
When we're talking about vitamin A, and it's important.
The 1st one I usually think about is, honestly, immunity.
And with cows, we really don't think about them having a large immune problem, right?
Cows are pretty robust, but vitamin A is very important for epithelial integrity.
And what that really means is like thinking about things like your skin, your reproductive track.
Your, your respiratory track, your, um, digestive track, all of those are epithelium.
And they're all quickly turning over, which means that you need to make sure that they are forming correctly and creating barriers and basically productive organs, even skins in organ, which is kind of interesting.
So when we think about cows, when we say, okay, with vitamin A, if a cow is low in vitamin A, where might that show up?
I would say the common clinical symptom when they get very, very deficient is actually night blindness.
And that's something that's really hard to pick up on.
But when we step back just a few more notches and say, okay, they are subclinically deficient, meaning that they are deficient enough to where it's starting to impact their biology.
That's probably where we're risking in the case of drought situations.
And what I'd likely see in those situations would be, um, actually some reduction in reproduction would probably be the number one.
I know everybody thinks about abortion and vitamin A. But honestly, uh, you have to be extremely deficient in vitamin A to see a lot of abortions.
Usually what happens is there's something else, uh, like a disease or some, or some other reason that they are compromised where the vitamin A being low is associated with that.
But it's because it's not creating that barrier, if that makes sense.
So the bottom line is for the cow, we typically, I would say, in situations where we have nice green grass, they go out there, they graze for 5 or 6 months.
We usually don't see deficiencies, but in the case of confinement or in situations where they're grazing even brown forages like this year with this drought, then we can start getting low and we might see some effects on the cow.
But even more importantly, and I would say the most susceptible animal in our Calcalf system is that baby calf.
And regardless of drought, we do see that it is a challenge to get that baby calf to have enough vitamin A to be able to amount an immune response.
And we all know how challenging it can be for us to keep those baby calves healthy.
And vitamin A, as I said, is extremely important for that epithelial integrity.
And we talk about the the GI tract, so the digestive tract.
One of the common things we see with deficiency of vitamin A and baby caps is diarrhea and diarrhea at a fairly young age, really 3 days to about 3 weeks.
And the other one would be, of course, a respiratory disease because again, it's important for the integrity of that respiratory track.
So that baby calf is probably, uh, the one that I usually focus on in most years and worry about trying to meet its need, which means we got to meet the cows need, and we got to have enough in the diet when that cow is forming the colostrum, because that's how that baby calf gets it.
[Brad Mills, Program Host]
There is much more to follow up on this discussion on vitamin A in a cow's diet.
Stay tuned for future programs where Mary talks about how drought conditions have caused this issue to be more of a problem.
For Nebraska extension almanac.
I'm Brad Mills.
Nebraska Extension Almanac is a production of IANR Media and Nebraska Extension.
For more information on how your university is serving Nebraskans, go to extension.unl.edu.
Vitamin A in Cow/Calf Production Part 2
Vitamin A is an important part of a cow’s diet. Extension Beef Systems Specialist Mary Drewnoski explains how drought conditions have made it harder for cows to get the vitamin A they need.
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[Brad Mills, Program Host]
Nebraska Extension Almanac.
On our previous almanac program, extension B systems specialist Mary Dronowski talked about the importance of vitamin A on the immunity system of cattle.
On today's program, she continues this discussion by focusing on how the drought has made this problem worse, and what solutions might be available to producers going into the fall.
[Mary Drewnoski, Nebraska Extension Beef Systems Specialist]
Yeah, so beta carotene is correlated with the uh, greenness of forage, and beta carotene is basically a precursor to vitamin A. So it's what is naturally in our forages that supply vitamin A to the cow.
In the case of brown forage, or even just light green forage.
It will be low in beta carotene and thus low in vitamin A. So what was happening right now in the situation of those cows who have been, let's say they came out of the winter, they were on brown forage, maybe some stored hay, maybe cornstalks, right?
They didn't have a lot of vitamin A, and they were using stores to meet their needs.
Then we get into the spring.
Maybe we got a little bit of green.
They got a little bit of vitamin A and now we went back and we're on brown forage again.
They probably did not build up a lot of stores during that period where they did have some green.
Not enough to get them through now what's going to become almost a full year without a, a lot of uh, high beta carotene or vitamin A. And so what we have to be thinking about is that, yes, the cow coming off of that green grass can have stores that can last even 6 months.
And so that's one of the things we normally depend on in our traditional systems is that during that winter period, yeah, we're using some of that up.
But now we have a situation where we're not building it back up.
So it's just like thinking about, I have this storage tank and I have now depleted the stores and I have nothing left and that's where we start running into problems.
So likely now is the time where people might be starting to get into some situations where that cow is deficient.
So what do we need to do?
Well, the 1st thing we have to think about is how are we supplying vitamin A to the cow?
Traditionally, we have said that the requirement is essentially 30,000 international units per day of vitamin A. And if you look at a lot of free choice minerals, they are slated to supply basically about 150,000 international units per pound.
You eat a quarter of a pound.
It's about what we say the supplemental requirement is.
That is not nearly enough in situations where cows are actually on brown forage for long periods of time.
We actually have some data.
We get a project out at Scott's Bluff with cows and confinement.
Where we were feeding them the recommendation of about that 30,000 international units per day.
And that did not keep their stores anywhere near adequate.
In fact, they were about half of where they needed to be.
Uh, so we we did look at feeding some various levels and found that we honestly probably needed to be about 2.5 to 3 times that amount in the total diet to be meeting needs.
So I usually tell people I'm shooting for 75000 international units per day if I do not have green forge. 75,000 international units per day of supplemental would be basically 350 to 400,000 international units per pound in a 4 ounce mineral.
[Brad Mills, Program Host]
Today's program was a portion of an interview taken from the beef watch podcast produced by Nebraska Extension.
To hear the entire interview, go to beef.unl.edu or download from Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
For Nebraska, extension almanac.
I'm Brad Mills.
Nebraska Extension Almanac is a production of IANR Media and Nebraska Extension.
For more information on how your university is serving Nebraskans, go to extension.unl.edu.