For many years, Powell River Project was a unique partnership between state agencies, Virginia Tech and Virginia Cooperative Extension and private industry, Red River Coal Company.
Powell River Project was the site of many trials and experiments on a variety of subjects. Many dealt with land reclamation and the establishment of wildlife habitat. One issue that I found most interesting was a water reclamation project funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) looking at turning bathhouse wastewater into potable water.
Space travel had the same issue. Water is heavy and unavailable in the voids of space, so life-sustaining water would have to be recycled during prolonged trips.
As an active surface mining operation, septic systems were not permitted. Since the hydrology of the land had been altered, no one could predict where any sewage would end up, thus it had to be stored and reclaimed. Thus, the bathhouse became a deep space vessel, reusing water like a manned mission would be forced to do.
Of course, there were livestock experiments on the project’s grounds. Goats were studied for weed and brush control, and there was a cow herd roaming the large flat steppes created by the coal mine.
Over the years, Virginia Tech Extension veterinarian Dee Whittier noted that cows at Powell River Project had a life expectancy about two years shorter than normal. The climate and elevation gave cattle a grazing advantage, but beginning about age 6, mature cows would start to lose weight and finally die in what should have been the latter part of their prime.
Whittier suspected Johne’s disease, but examinations of the cattle’s gastric and intestinal systems found no evidence of any disease that would have been both life-threatening and widespread enough to be a definitive cause.
Whittier uncovered the culprit by examining the deceased cows’ mouths. Without fail, each animal's teeth were worn to the point they weren't able to eat enough to sustain themselves.
But what caused the teeth of these animals to be prematurely worn down? The answer was dust. Each day, hundreds of trucks, loaders and graders trammed past the cow pastures on their way to the mine or back to mine office.
As they passed, the gravel roads produced clouds of dust that settled on the grass. The dust (mostly limestone rock dust) raised the ash content of the pasture so high, it literally sanded and ground the cattle’s teeth down as they grazed.
You may be asking, “What’s this have to do with me? I don’t live near a surface mine." Or you might think, “I live on an unpaved road, but we don’t have enough traffic to raise that level of dust.”
What happened in the mountains of far southwestern Virginia is important because many of the hay tools we use, especially if they are running out of adjustment, may be increasing the ash content of our hay crops to a level capable of prematurely starving our cattle just as effectively.
What is ash and where does it come from? When you get a hay sample back from the laboratory, it will have a percentage value for the amount of ash in your hay. Ash includes the naturally occurring minerals in the plant: calcium, magnesium, potassium, phosphorus and so on. While these minerals are important, they add zero calories to the hay.
Dan Undersander, extension specialist in agronomy at the University of Wisconsin (UW), has done extensive research on ash content and the relationship between ash level in forages and the proper adjustment of forage machinery.
In grass, the amounts of those in-plant minerals are around 6%; alfalfa is a bit higher at 8%. Any amount higher than those figures in your sample is a measure of soil contamination.
Ash content of forage samples from the UW Marshfield Soil and Forage Analysis Laboratory (2005-09) showed haylage samples averaged 10.7% ash with a maximum of 27%. Dry hay was slightly lower with an average of 9.4% ash and a high of 25.7%.
You might think, “Those high levels of ash are from outlying poor managers.” Again, according to Undersander’s work, this is not the case. Ash content of forage samples entered in the 2009 World Dairy Expo contests showed maximum levels of ash in the Haylage, Dairy Hay and Commercial Hay categories to be 15.6%, 15.2% and 13.9%, respectively.
So how is this soil finding its way into our animals’ feed? The honest answer is: We are putting it there.
Any time a tooth from a tedder, rake or baler pick-up strikes the ground, the result is some soil contamination. We can get soil in our hay by mowing our hay crops below the recommended setting of 4 inches.
Disc mower-conditioners running too low don’t have to strike the ground. The vacuum created by the blades that lift the crop and feed the rolls can and will suck soil up along with the hay.
One of the biggest culprits to high ash levels on the machinery side has to be the wheel rake. Due to their speed and ability to merge wide swaths of hay quickly, wheel rakes have made a huge comeback.
Their issue is that they are ground-driven, so they cannot help but add ash to our hay. But be advised, just because you don’t use a wheel rake doesn’t make you immune from soil contamination.
Raking seems to be the number one action that greatly affects ash content, and any rake set too low is going to increase contamination. For that matter, any tool set too low will increase ash content.
If soil contamination can’t be totally eliminated, why worry about it? The short answer is: cash. We are in a record-setting high-price cattle market. Replacements are expensive; a decent calf is worth more than $2,000.
Why would you want to go out, burn diesel, wear out machinery and spend precious time making hay that has less feed value to your animals?
How bad can it be? Let’s say you do a decent job, and you have a hay sample that tests 18% ash. You are feeding 1,200-pound cows hay from mid-November to April 10.
That size animal will eat about 27 pounds of hay per day, and the above time frame is 146 days; therefore, your cows are each consuming 3,942 pounds of hay per year.
Assuming we are feeding them grass hay; 18% ash hay has 12% contamination. Twelve percent of 3,942 tells us that each year, you are feeding each cow more than 470 pounds of soil over each hay-feeding season.
That’s 3.25 pounds of soil a day. If that doesn't worry you, that 2-year-old heifer will be fed more than a ton of soil by the time she is 6 years old. That must take a toll on her teeth, gut and overall performance. Think how much more productive she could have been if we replaced that soil with protein, energy and fiber.
Now is the time to get your hay equipment ready to harvest hay, not soil. Replace full sets of teeth, not individual teeth. New teeth are going to be longer than worn ones, so they will hit the ground while the rest of the teeth move hay. When you replace your rake or pickup teeth, put the worn ones up and label them. They will likely match the ones you lose next season.
