– Mark Sulc and Bill Weiss, OSU Extension
Timing is everything!
The optimal time for making a first cutting of forages is fast approaching. But what is the optimal timing to take the first cutting (or any cutting for that matter)? Many will answer by saying it is when you have time and there is a good weather window to get the forage cut and put up! Yes indeed, that is a valid answer. Both of those factors are important and can’t be ignored. However, we know that forage quality declines as the crop moves into flowering stages. The first cutting is usually the highest yielding cutting, so we should try to aim for good quality for as much of it as possible!
But what is “good quality” forage? The correct answer is that it depends on what you feed it to. The concentration of neutral detergent fiber (NDF) is a measure of most of the fiber in forages. The concentration of forage fiber increases with maturity and is negatively correlated with feed intake by animals and the energy concentration of the diet. With hay crop forages, digestibility of the fiber and NDF concentrations have a strong negative correlation so one can assume forages with greater NDF concentrations have fiber that is less digestible.
Below are good forage NDF targets to aim for when feeding different classes of livestock (Table 1). These are general guidelines, but . . .
Continue reading Forage Quality Targets Based on Animal Class