Forage Types

When it comes to your land and cattle, you’re always looking for new ways to improve them. You wouldn’t have a successful business if you didn’t.

Choosing which grass to plant can be confusing. There are multiple different species, and then varieties within the species. Mix or straight, add legume or not? This can be a complicated decision.

Imagine a hay feeding system where you did not have to use a tractor all winter and, at the same time, it allowed you to build up pasture nutrient levels without applying commercial fertilizer. Would you be interested?

When I help growers choose the right alfalfa for their operations, there are a lot of factors we discuss. As an adviser, my goal is to really understand each grower’s unique situation and management style to recommend an alfalfa variety that best fits those needs.

This is a story of agriculture in Britain hundreds of years ago, with some applications for us today. The year was 1750. The population of Britain was estimated at 5.5 million. It had reached this level several times over the former 1,000 years but had never surpassed it.

Currently underway is a project to enable alfalfa producers to map yield and quality (or more precisely, nutritive value) across an alfalfa field using an unmanned aircraft system (UAS – also called a drone) at sufficient resolution to enable identification of the yield damage caused by wheel traffic.