Forage Production

If you are not familiar with binomial nomenclature (the international language for naming plants), let’s clarify the differences between species, variety and cultivar, which are all terms you will encounter during seed selection.

This project received 2017 funding from the U.S. Alfalfa Farmer Research Initiative (aka Alfalfa Checkoff). Brandon Schlautman is the lead researcher from The Land Institute on this project. Email Brandon Schlautman. 

As we enter winter and begin to think about spring, it may be the time of year when many of you check fence conditions to keep livestock in or out of neighboring fields.

Each bale of hay contains mineral nutrients that come from soil reserves or from applied fertilizer. When fed to livestock, most of these nutrients will pass through the animals and can by recycled for future forage growth.

Imagine a contest at a local livestock show where attendees are asked to guess the weight of the prize-winning animal. Nearly everyone will fail to get it precisely right. But what if you averaged everyone’s answers?

In an earlier edition of Progressive Forage, we featured an article that compared a football team to the basics of farm finance. In that analogy, the safety position on a football team was compared to your farm’s equity.