How does your brain work? Are you of the analytical ilk or are you more of a creative thinker? Do you articulate your thoughts in words or would you rather work with numbers? Temple Grandin, for...

For much of the U.S., frost is within a page turn of the calendar. That means the prussic acid poisoning alarm for sorghum-related species will promptly be sounded. In the near future, however, there...

To cut, or not to cut. That is the question Hamlet would ask if only he were a forage producer and not a Shakespeare character. More specifically, the question would be to give alfalfa a longer rest a...

What comes to mind when you think about the fall of 2021? Is it the incredibly high fertilizer prices that more than doubled year-over-year? Or maybe it’s extremely sluggish supply chains for parts...

We hear a lot about “value-added” these days. When margins are tight, farmers figure out ways to get more money from the same raw product. Often, that involves skipping the middle man and realizin...

Producers play many roles during the hay season, and meteorologist is often one of them...

Net wrap and baler twine configured out of plastic as thin as five-thousandths of an inch thick can hold the shape and support the weight of bales well over 1,000 pounds...

When it’s time to harvest alfalfa for silage or hay, we are usually concerned about getting the crop cut at the right time, hitting weather windows for good drying conditions, and removing the crop from the field while maintaining the correct moisture and quality...

Alfalfa has been termed the “Queen of Forages.” Unfortunately, her highness is a fickle ruler...

Although the USDA has Hay Quality Designation Guidelines (see tables) based on nutrition tests for alfalfa, that alone does not cover all of the terms and grades we use to describe hay. Many of the terms we use are subjective since not everyone follows the USDA chart, or if they do, it may not be comprehensive enough to fully determine quality...