A week of wild weather brought some much-needed moisture to some areas, it also meant more delays for livestock producers trying to get hay cut.

Brent Flaten, a Crops Extension Specialist with Saskatchewan’s Ministry of Agriculture, says this week’s crop report shows provincially 22% of the hay crop has been cut and 26% baled or put into silage:

“A lot of the areas where they didn’t get any early rains, the yield of that hay is quite low. The quality varies certainly with the string of thundershowers rolling through last week and then again this week. There may be some deterioration in the quality of the hay, particularly anything that’s been cut.”

Despite a hot, humid week crops are advancing quickly and have remained in relatively good condition.

Provincially about 81% of the fall cereals, 77% of the spring cereals, 75% of the oilseeds and 79% of the pulse crops are at their normal stage of development for this time of year

Flaten says farmers are busy scouting crops and spraying for sclerotinia in canola and fusarium head blight in cereal crops.

“There’s some leaf spot diseases and root rot. One thing with root rot is that it can occur in crops whether it’s wet or dry just depending on the species infecting the root. So, that’s been a concern kind of throughout the province but not as widespread as in 2016 when it was so wet.”

With the high temperatures farmers are also seeing heat blasting in some of the canola crops, and in areas where it’s been very dry, there have been some issues with grasshoppers.