Quality of Alfalfa Hay Chemically Treated at Cutting to Hasten Field Drying

Alfalfa Hay Quality Testing

Alfalfa is the most productive and highest quality forage species. Over one million acres of alfalfa have been harvested each year in Montana since 1960. Yield and forage quality of alfalfa vary widely across environments and operations. Currently there is much interest in targeting specialized hay markets. Most Montana producers can consistently produce alfalfa that is of fair to good quality....

Effect of yeast culture supplementation of alfalfa silage or alfalfa hay fed to lactating dairy cows

The Future of Alfalfa Forage Quality Testing in Hay Markets

Forage quality testing defines the language of value between the dairy and forage sector. From a nutritionist’s viewpoint, forage quality consists of many analyses that, together, provide a prediction of performance in a balanced ration for the dairy cow. Marketing systems, on the other hand, require a few simple criteria that can be related to value and price discovery. Currently, most trading...

Changing Forage Quality Testing for Alfalfa Hay Markets:

There is ample evidence that our current fiber-based marketing system is inadequate in predicting some of the most important features of alfalfa and other hay products. Worse, our current system has the potential for abuses. Seven of these abuses are described here. One key misuse is the over-emphasis of small differences in fiber concentration (as translated to TDN or RFV), while ignoring impo...

effects of alfalfa maturity and cutting times on availability of alfalfa hay protein for dairy cows

this experiment was conducted to consider the effects of maturity and cutting time on chemical composition and available protein content of alfalfa hay for dairy cows.. alfalfa hay harvested at two maturity stages (pre-bloom and early bloom) and two cutting times (morning and afternoon). available protein was predicted using nrc (2001) and dve/oeb (1994) models. in the nrc model (2001), alfalfa...