Leaving sufficient residual plant material (leaves, lower stem bases and crowns) is essential to maximize next year’s production for perennial grasses.

As an alfalfa stand ages and thins, the primary question becomes: Is this stand good enough to keep? Now is a good time to evaluate stands as more time is allowed for planning crop rotations than when stands are evaluated in the spring and determined to be uneconomic.

Let’s enter a very strange world. Dark, silent, microscopic, underground. The soil – on which our crops and forages depend – is a veritable Amazon jungle teeming with thousands of species of animals and plants and something that’s not quite either: fungi.

Farm safety is often top of mind in our industry and especially in the fall. Not only is it the busy harvest season, but The National Education Center for Agriculture Safety recognizes National Farm Safety and Health Week, this year from Sept. 15-21.

For the first time since 2019, the Midwest is mostly clear of drought advisories, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. In fact, May was one of the wettest months on record for Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin and South Dakota and regions of Michigan, with above-normal precipitation continuing throughout the growing season. Such weather has dairy producers in a pinch to manage manure appropriately.

Maximizing homegrown forages is appealing to many dairy producers, especially as they face tough market conditions.

It may seem simplistic to analogize soil with a checkbook, but it works and is more apt than perceived. Matter can be neither created nor destroyed. It’s a simple truth that drives everything in the universe and holds true in the soil as it does in the cosmos – giving rise to the soil nutrient balance.

The foundation of most diets fed to dairy and beef cattle includes forages, but making them into high-quality silage that can be fed year-round is a challenge.

Fiber isn’t fiber isn’t fiber. Lots of folks talk about fiber – doctors, teachers, marketers, nutritionists – but there are different types of nutritional fiber, and fiber digestibility partially depends on the species of animal consuming it.