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Old Man Winter has really been in the business of making winter this year. Within a two-week period, we had a couple of storms that have dumped around 2 feet of snow in the valley, 30- to 40-mph winds to blow it into 6-foot drifts across the road and a five-day stretch where the high temperature was -10ºF.
USDA’s 2016 Crop Production report provides harvest summaries and other information for hay and forage crops. The numbers might also offer reasons why hay prices are at six-year lows.
Just as thinning hair is a hazard for humans, a thin alfalfa stand is a common hazard of getting old. But thin alfalfa stands can occur in young stands as well. So what is the wisdom of overseeding alfalfa into alfalfa to improve the stand life and to correct stand deficiencies?
Daniel Funke, owner and operator of Funke Custom Baling and Hay Sales in Larchwood, Iowa, has been wrapping hay since 2010 – a year he had more ruined hay than good hay.
The 2016 alfalfa production season has been a challenging one to say the least – somewhat reminiscent of 2009, or of periods in the early 2000s. Alfalfa producers enjoyed record high prices in 2014, but they dropped significantly in 2015, and this year has been worse yet.
USDA’s crop production and hay stocks reports will update 2016 hay and forage production totals, hay inventories and alfalfa new seeding acreage estimates on Jan. 12, 2017. For now, most hay growers and marketers can be happy 2016 is in their rear-view mirror.
In March 2016, Progressive Forage published a story on a biocontrol nematode that looked promising for control of the alfalfa snout beetle. This is a follow-up report on the progress of that enterprise.
The hay production industry received new contenders in 2014 when Alforex Seeds debuted the first conventionally bred lower lignin alfalfa variety at World Dairy Expo in Madison, Wisconsin.
Over the past four years, Iowa State University has conducted 14 site-years of foliar fungicide research trials with alfalfa at the ISU Northeast Research and Demonstration Farm near Nashua, Iowa.
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