I know just enough about social media to be dangerous. I don’t spend a lot of time online, but I do belong to some forage groups, and I enjoy following some of the questions and debates. Recently, a fertilizer discussion caught my eye.

What happens during the first 24 hours after a bale of silage is formed but not yet wrapped? Can forage quality be improved if the bale is wrapped even sooner than 24 hours after baling? The short answer is: yes.

It is 3 o’clock in the afternoon, and the hay is just finally dry enough to bale. On the first round in the field, my pocket vibrates just as my radio sitting in the cup holders starts to blast; it must be bad news.

Baled silage, or baleage, is a highly nutritious livestock feed and can help producers better manage their harvest window and harvest their crop at its optimum quality.

Plastic recycling is an issue that concerns consumers in almost every industry, and agriculture is no different. A study released in 2011 found that Ontario farmers use nearly 7,000 tonnes of plastic as part of their yearly operations.

In the same way that stores take inventory to assess their performance, plan for the future and detect any unaccounted-for loss of product, on-farm forage inventories can reap similar benefits for farms. During his webinar, “Tools for Helping to Determine On-Farm Forage Inventories,” presented by the University of Wisconsin – Madison Extension as part of their Growing & Feeding Alternative Forages webinar series in April, Kevin Jarek shared helpful tips on how to assess forage inventories and how they can be useful.