Quickly and accurately characterizing the nutrient content of feedstuffs is vital for balancing high-performance dairy cow rations. It also allows manufacturers to develop robust quality control programs and represent their products as precisely as possible. When it comes to supporting overall animal health and performance, one of the most important nutrients we evaluate as an industry is protein.

Your operation may have several important characteristics that make it unique, but if you start with these six elements, a sound and practical winter cow herd supplementation program can become an efficient and effective segment of your business.

Recently, producers at the Nebraska Grazing Conference indicated that there is still a lot of apprehension around the use of NIRS in forage evaluation. The most common concern was that NIRS is “fine” for alfalfa but not accurate enough for grass forages.

Have you ever found a good deal on a product, or an off-brand product, and hurried to make the purchase, only to have the item quickly break or underperform? We all like the idea of getting more for less. However, sometimes the deal isn’t worth the sacrifice in the long run.

When we think about protein in a ration, we typically think of it as the most expensive nutrient from a feed cost standpoint, but it can also be expensive from a cost of gain perspective if we do not provide enough in a ration.