According to USDA’s 2014 Census of Agriculture, 97 percent of the 2.1 million farms in the United States are family owned and operated. Unfortunately, the trend for the last few years ha...
It seems that 2017 has brought more discussion about whether a beef cattle operation should buy or bale hay than what I recall seeing in the past. The beauty of such a discussion is that there is no c...
The push to improve alfalfa forage quality through lowering lignin content and, more importantly, improving fiber digestibility is in full-throttle mode. You’d have to be living under a rock to thin...
In many parts of the United States, alfalfa is cut three to five times per year for three to five years; then the stand begins to lose productivity and it is rotated to another crop.Research has shown...
The rake, generally speaking, is the piece of forage-making equipment that probably suffers from the biggest inferiority complex. Stuck between the more noteworthy mower-conditioner and baler or chopp...
One of the long-standing topics of debate in the forage world is whether it is advantageous to cut in the morning or during late afternoon. People still hang their hat on one side of this argument or...
I’ve come to the conclusion that no forage species offers more complexities and mind-boggling management alternatives than toxic tall fescue. It is both a gift from God and at the same time a curse...
With a growing need for alfalfa, the Peoples Republic of China aims to significantly ramp up domestic production, according to a recent GAIN Report published by USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service a...
I’ll admit it — for many years my eyes glossed right over the ash content of a forage sample. That’s not the case anymore.Ash content in harvested forages can have a significant role in animal p...
