Forage Production

Feed is the most expensive and one of the most necessary products in a ranch budget, making it no surprise that ranchers love a good discount on hay. Hay producers, on the other hand, have to decide whether or not that discount is worth the risk to their businesses.

Changes come hard to most of us … no surprise there. Mention changes involving “engine emissions,” and the growls get even louder – and with some good reasons, I might add. Of course, changes are nothing new under the sun when it comes to engines and emissions standards.

When you can see the quality of the hay, haylage or baleage that you harvested last year, and how the animals eating it are doing, now is a good time to evaluate how well you did with forage harvesting last year.

At the American Forage and Grassland Council’s annual meeting in mid-January, 75-year-old Ted Hughes, a self-professed “grass farmer” and beef cattle producer from Georgia, competed in the annual Forage Spokesperson contest.

There is a lot of interest and energy being focused on cover crops and cover crop usage across the country. In fact, as I am writing this article, there is a “cover crop meeting” going on in our conference room.

We have suspected for a long time the average yield of alfalfa reported for U.S. farms is far less than what growers could produce. Is there a significant “yield gap” between these reports and reasonable yield goals?