Grower interview

For our next speaker.

Thank you, doctor Ransom
for- for your presentation.

Our next speaker is
McKay Morgan,

who is a grower in southern Utah.

They're going to show- share
their experience,

gaining optimal small grain
forage production.

(...)

>> McKay: Can you hear me?

>> Interviewer: We can hear you,
and we can see you.

>> Okay, well, first of all,
I would like to just say,

hi, to all our fellow agriculture people.

And thanks to you from USU
for putting these top skills on.

McKay: And... have
I got a picture up on the screen?

>> We do.
We now see your presentation live.

>> I've got two pictures to show.

That one is a picture of my father,
and I'll explain that.

That's a crop of grain that
we grew just a few years back.

I think that was in 2015.

And the other picture is just another
and shown- showing it being cut, but.

Would you take them off and I'll,

start out by just telling you a little bit
about my background.

I- I grew up in an Circleville,

following my father around my whole life.

I- my dad tells the story of
when I went to kindergarten,

when I was five years old, I came home
and got on the tractor with him, and he-

he asked me how school was,
and I told him just a half a day wasted.

And so, I think
that all throughout my life, I,

I didn't get a whole lot from schooling.

I had to learn what I learned from the
school, hard knocks it seems like, so.

So now I'm, you know, 48 years later

and- and I don't have a lot
of knowledge even yet.

But we started out, you know,
I followed him my whole life.

We flood irrigated and...

we- my dad,

you know, he followed his father.

They both run a shovel all the time.

My- my grandfather would rather shovel
a ditch than do anything.

And- and he always made them
look quite- quite nicely.

And my- my dad was similar to the same.

And, as I grew up,
I enjoyed everything my dad enjoyed.

And he- he loved farming and dairying
we were dairy men also.

And I later went on my mission and-

and after returning from my mission,
I went to Utah State for a year,

studying dairy herdsman and- and,

after that, I returned back to the farm.

And when I returned, my father

was milking about 120 cows
and we were farming

three or 400 acres, all that by shovel
and flood irrigation and-

and we started to expand a little bit,
from that.

And- and currently today
we're- we're farming about

2500 acres
and- and milking over 3000 cows.

So we've expanded from that
and- and enjoyed

every minute of it.

When speaking of small grain,

I was always told that
the Circleville could-

could grow good grain.

And over the years, we-
we always tried to go- grow corn and,

and love the- the corn feed and- and,

we- we,

as I grew more into it,
I realized that we weren't

getting the quality out of the corn,
nor the tonnage that- that it should do.

We did a little custom harvesting,

back in 2003 or thereabouts.

And- and as we went around the surrounding
area harvesting corn,

we realized that our corn was doing about
half what everybody else's was.

And that led me to
to want to plant more grain.

And so we started...

we started planting some fall triticale

and found out
that it was producing more tons

and about as good
a quality is as our corn was.

So we decided that we would

plant more grain and less corn,

and we went away from corn
for several years

and decided to try it again,
to prove to ourselves once again that it-

we just aren't good enough farmers and
not in the right climate to grow the corn.

So currently,

we rely on our friends over the mountain
and flow well to grow corn for us.

And- and they, do such a good job that we,

we get our corn supply from them,

and we grow grain in our valley.

Back in about 2008 is

when we, we discovered that we
could grow this winter grain...

rather well.
And,

some of the first crops
that we grew produced,

you know, eight, nine,
right under the acre.

Back in the- the main variety

that we were planting
with the variety called pica.

And after a first year or two,

we started venturing out
into some of the other varieties,

and we planted several of them
over the years.

The seed salesman started to send a plan,
three-way and four-way and,

and even a six-way at one point.

And I started to notice that

we weren't getting the tonnage out of-

out of the, other varieties.

And when I tried to get back to the pica
variety,

it was no longer available,
that we could find.

And so this past year,
I was able to find some pica variety,

it came from Canada, and-

and I hope it's the same genetics
that we had back in those years.

And we're- we're hoping-

we'll know
more as we grow this, this crop this year.

But we- we bought some in 2019

and had, some growed for us in 2020.

And it's been harvested and we planted
in the fall of 2020, which we just passed.

So to go along with that and some of
the other conversations tonight,

we- we still try to venture out
and try new varieties.

One of our friends there, Dustin Christian
and United Soil

run a test last summer
on different varieties of grain.

McKay: And we,

were able to put some of this pica
seed in that test

and- and another variety named Thor,

was the highest yielding variety.

And so we planted some of that variety
this year

along with, with our pica,
and also some 719

to see how it performs.

To go along with that,

we- we learned from some of the friends

over in the Enterprise Valley,
a few years back

that they were trying to plant grain
in their alfalfa stand.

McKay: and in- in our valley,
we rely on,

the- the snowpack to provide our water.

And probably around eight out of
ten years, we dry up, significantly

in July, and we start
to run out of water, and

and our crops always struggled.
So...

going back, in about the early 2000s,
we started,

to go from, flood irrigation
to sprinkle irrigation.

And we found that-
that was a much easier and better way

and our crops even did better.

We picked up tonnage per acre
because of that.

And and so I've learned that

the- the,

the spring when triticale winter trip
needs water,

we have lots of water available
and it can handle cold water

where our alfalfa can't handle it as well.

And so we've- we've implemented that

and planting some winter trip
in our alfalfa stands.

And we have been enjoying that.

It's upped our production
a couple tons to the acre

which is quite valuable in in our area,

especially when we run out of water.

There's a few drawbacks in that.

First of all, the back in the,

the early 2000s,
we were still non roundup ready hay.

And- and so it's easy
to spray out of a patch

of hay and plant fall grain

and then follow it up the next summer

with another batch of hay or,
or even another batch of grain.

But we- I've found that now
it's a little difficult

because we need to get that fall grain
planted,

and it's hard to spray out that Roundup
Ready hay.

We- we have mostly roundup ready hay,
which is what we like.

And so we're trying to,

spray that payout in the spring after

the grain is grew up high enough
and the hay starts to green up

and spray and kill the hay out of the-
the grain patch,

particularly on those
that we're trying to rotate.

McKay: We found with the grain
in our hay,

that the tonnage goes up
and especially in the first crop

and maybe a little lower in the second,

but back to normal in third crop hay.
And my third crop,

most of the grain is- is gone in the hay.

That's worked out really well for us.

We've been able
to feed that to our milk cows,

and with the extra tons of feed
that we're able to grow,

it's less tons we have
to purchase to feed the cows.

And- there was-

well, the other thing that we've done...

over the last two or three years,
we've been experimenting with this,

we found that if we don't plant the grain

in our first and second year
stands of hay

we can still try and control the weeds
because it is roundup hay,

and hopefully get those weeds under good
enough control that when we start

to implement
the grain in our hay stands, that

the weeds don't come as bad.

The weed's our problem.

And that's something we're trying to
figure out how to manage better because we

at this point we are liking the grain
in the in the hay stands.

It doesn't seem to be affecting our stand
much,

and we're getting more tonnage out of it.

I don't know...

exactly what- what else
I should tell you about it.

Other than we're- we're extremely happy
with,

the fall grain and... oh- the other thing

that I would like to know,
if anybody has information on.

We're struggling with what to plant

behind winter triticale

in the spring
after we've harvested our winter trip,

and we don't want to go back
to alfalfa yet.

We've tried sorghum and sorghum sedan,
and we've tried, oats.

We've tried...

corn
back when were trying corn.

We can't find nothing
that grows really good and produces

a, you know, a good crop,
you know, along in

August, September time frame.

This summer, I'm planning on planting some
some summer trip

behind the winter trip and see if we can
get some tonnage out of that.

So with that
I guess that's all I have to say.

And I, thank you for the opportunity
to tell our story and-

and what's working for us.

And- and we appreciate it for all involved
and all of you.

And, guess that's all I have.

Thank you.

>> Interviewer: Thank you, Mr. Morgan

So we do have time for questions.

It looks like we do have one in the chat
box for you.

The question is, how heavy
are you planting grain in your hay crops?

>> McKay: Okay.

The first the first couple of years,
we planted,

about 90 to 100 pounds
to the acre.

And we found that to be
maybe a little, too heavy.

This past fall,
I planted 80 pounds to the acre...

hoping that it will...

With 90 to 100 pounds
when we cut our first crop,

we probably had about

60 to 70% grain and,

30% alfalfa in the in the crop.

We're hoping to get it closer to 50/50.

We- we do struggle with water.
So...

our whole goal is to get as much tonnage
as we can

in the early months of the
the summer to help with the months

we don't have water.

So that's what we've done.
We backed off to 80 pounds.

I'll- I'll have more information
on that next summer.

>> Interviewer: Thank you.

Mr. Morgan, are you confident enough
to answer questions in the chat box?

>> McKay: I've got Trent Wild here
helping me, we're in his office

and so we can probably figure that out.

>> Interviewer: Okay,
so I'll go ahead and leave it to that.

We'll go ahead and move on
to our next presenter, thank you

Mr. Morgan, for, letting everyone on this
meeting know about your experiences.

It's been very informative.

>> Thank You.

>> Thank you.