Forage Testing

A Bloomington, WI, dairy farmer is the new World’s Champion Forage Producer. Terry Mergen won the 2001 World’s Forage Analysis Superbowl, a forage quality...

Testing forages is especially important in drought years, when highly variable Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) hay and cornstalk bales are being utilized. But tell your lab to use wet chemical analysis rather than near-infrared spectroscopy, suggest Joe Sellers and Stephen Barnhart, Iowa State...

Neal Martin, director of the U.S. Dairy Forage Research Center in Madison, WI, recently received the first-ever John S. Shenk Memorial Award for 20 years of service to the NIRS Forage and Feed Testing Consortium (NIRSC)...

Ever have a hay sale go bust because your forage analysis didn’t come back with the same results as the buyer’s? Ever have a high-testing hay not “milk” as expected? You’re not alone. Arguments over the consistency of hay tests are as common as rain on your first cut or maybe even cheesehead hats at...

  A rapid test that precisely measures rumen starch digestibility of feed ingredients is helping nutritionist Will VanNostran reduce his client herds’ ration costs. He estimates savings from 5¢ to 10¢/cow/day depending on ingredient costs. The test is part of a service called Calibrate Technologies,...

Cattle producers should have purchased hay quality-tested to protect their livestock investment, suggests Glenn Selk, Oklahoma State University (OSU) Cooperative Extension emeritus livestock specialist...

Livestock producers can quickly lose animals if they fail to monitor drought-stricken forages for high levels of prussic acid and nitrate, warns the head toxicologist at the Texas Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Lab (TVMDL)...

Western hay prices, innovative forage equipment, forage-testing suggestions, spider mites and what it takes to produce quality forage. All those subjects will be discussed in a few short hours on Feb. 12 during Forage Seminars hosted by Mycogen Seeds and Hay & Forage Grower at World Ag Expo, Tulare,...

The Iowa Beef Center (IBC) and Iowa State University (ISU) Extension beef specialists are encouraging producers to take advantage of a cost-share forage testing project...

A forage testing and feeding project, aimed at helping beef producers deal with this year’s poor-quality forages and prevent calving problems, has been developed by Iowa State University (ISU) Extension beef specialists...