Farmers and ranchers operate with the understanding that many things are beyond their control despite the best laid plans and management. Market prices, input costs, pests, and diseases are just some...

Cows were made to eat forage. We give them other stuff, but none of it comes under the entrée heading. Everything else is strictly a side dish.Built into this need for forage is the ruminant’s abil...

Alan Franzluebbers has been on a mission to better quantify the need for nitrogen in pasture systems. “If you have no nitrogen, then you have no yield,” said the USDA-ARS research scientist, “Bu...

The foundations of plant growth should always be top of mind when striving to get the most livestock production out of your pastures. These foundations include water and sunlight. Plants combine...

Rodents are a major pest of alfalfa and other forage crops. Their control has never been easy given their belowground nature of existence. In alfalfa, rodents such as pocket gophers, meadow voles, and...

Photo: Emma Cotton/VTDiggerScott and Amber Hoyt operate an organic dairy farm in Vermont. Their recent experience provides a warning for others.In reading the January 25 issue of Hoard’s Dairy...

The annual release of hay and forage data by USDA that defines the previous year’s hay production and year-ending inventories arrived in email inboxes last Thursday. The Crop Production and Crop Pro...

It’s difficult to deny that our climate is changing. For the remainder of this century, climate experts expect most of us to experience a warmer environment with more intense weather events.How will...

Before expanding my agricultural canvas as a national magazine editor, I really had little idea how the rest of the nation operated beyond my home Midwest region. Here, we plant, it rains, crops grow...

The severe, late December frigid weather that plunged thermometer mercury levels far below freezing — even into the Deep South — has left winter annual forages in a compromised state.Lisa Ba...