Aug. 23 2022 The benefits of alfalfa as a feedstuff, soil enhancer, and nitrogen contributor are well known here on Earth. Someday, some of those same benefits may be leveraged on Mars

Aug. 16 2022 Throughout Northern U.S. dairy regions, forage harvester hay heads will soon be replaced with those of a corn silage ilk, and processor rolls will be cranked down

Aug. 16 2022 Describing an alfalfa field beyond “It looks good” or “It looks bad” has never been easy

Aug. 10 2022 Reflecting back to fifth-grade science class, you might recall that the Earth rotates on an axis of about 23.5 degrees. We live on a planet that is just a little off kilter, so to speak

Aug. 10 2022 Brian Mumm seeded down more than his usual number of alfalfa acres this year. He didn’t need to because he also raises 3,800 acres of high-value row crops with his father, Paul

Aug. 9 2022 No dairy farm looks the same. The same can be said for their perennial forage fields, most notably those with alfalfa

Aug. 2 2022 The COVID-19 pandemic shut down world economies for extended periods and continues to have a long tail. Ramping back up hasn’t been easy as evidenced by production challenges of goods and services

July 26 2022 Widespread conversion of pasture acres to alfalfa is never going to occur, nor should it. It’s not uncommon to see alfalfa as a component of a pasture mix or, in some cases, a primary grazing species

July 19 2022 Alfalfa has always been a crop that is more than happy to tell you when it’s hurting. There’s the distinctive “hopperburn” from potato leafhoppers, a funky looking “shepherd’s...

July 12 2022 Let’s be clear on one thing: Corn silage is the primary feed source of the dairy industry

July 5 2022 Many hay balers are also straw balers. Wheat straw makes for a no-brainer second enterprise using all of the same equipment needed for hay, only without the anxiety caused by maturity concerns, rain events,...

July 5 2022 When we talk about clovers for haying or grazing, species such as red clover, white clover, ladino clover, alsike clover, crimson clover, and others come to the immediate forefront

June 28 2022 There are several situations when the ability to seed alfalfa after a killed alfalfa crop might be the desired play. It certainly would be a “go-to” practice for many commercial alfalfa growers

June 21 2022 As many readers know by now, I spent most of my adult life as an extension agronomist in a dairy-dominated Wisconsin county

June 14 2022 Among humans, most communication is accomplished by speaking or writing. However, there’s a whole world of science that studies what is called nonverbal communication

June 7 2022 The problem at Virginia Tech’s McCormick Farm in the Shenandoah Valley was not dissimilar to what many cow-calf operators face — too much feeding of hay and not enough days on pasture

June 7 2022 In May 2014, the average price of alfalfa hay reached $227 per ton, which was a record-high price. That value was obliterated in April 2022, according to USDA’s Agricultural Prices report. The

May 31 2022 Everybody has a nemesis, something that seems to screw up the plan of action more often than not. For the haymaker, that curse-worthy adversary is often cited as rainfall

May 24 2022 Plant maturity is often cited as the primary driver of forage quality. Make no mistake — it is

May 17 2022 The amount of hay in the U.S. haymow continues to shrink and is down another 7% from a year ago. Compared to May 1, 2020, the inventory is down 18% or 3.7 million tons