Forage Quality and Testing

The success of any livestock operation depends on good quality forages. They also play a crucial role in the livestock industry in the US. Testing provides producers with quantitative measures of forage quality. Use Penn State Extension’s comprehensive resources to learn more about testing and evaluating forage quality, optimizing forage crop production, troubleshooting forage silage problems, minimizing forage shrink, and much more.

Forage Quality

As a livestock producer, you should be aware of the quality of your forage crops because it impacts on your net profit. Successful grass-fed beef production, for example, requires the highest quality forage. You can adopt a variety of grazing systems, each of which has its own benefits and challenges. The quality of your forage, however, forms the basis of each one.

Many things can impact on the quality of your forage crops. Spring is a particularly challenging time for the management of cool-season perennial forages because of the variable weather and forages growth rates. The frequency of cutting rates can also affect forage crop quality.

Testing Your Forages

For many years now, scientists have been working on refining their forage testing abilities, in order to improve animal nutrition and animal production. As a producer, you benefit from quicker results and more accurate testing, but it’s also important to understand why, how, and where to test. Penn State Extension’s resources on forage testing cover the basics including the importance of physical appraisal and chemical analysis, how to collect samples for analysis, and where to send your samples for analysis.

Both physical appraisal and chemical analysis can be used to determine forage quality. One of the main objectives of forage analysis is to determine the components within the fiber of the plant’s cell walls. Measurements should also be taken of forage particle size. You can arrange for this to be done off-site with an ASABE Particle Separator or the Ro-Tap Particle Separator. You can also determine particle size on-farm with the Penn State Particle Separator.

To better assess the economic potential of your forage crops, chemical analysis is required. Once you’ve collected your samples, you send them away for analysis. After interpreting the results, you’ll be able to decide whether you need to make any changes.

Hay, Silage, and Baleage Quality

It’s possible to harvest forage crops to use as stored feed in 3 basic ways. Dry hay, silage, and wet hay or baleage. In order to minimize losses and keep forage quality as high as possible, you must follow certain principles or guidelines.

Penn State Extension’s Hay Production Workshop addresses many of the challenges you might have to face. One challenge is the weather. However, you can decrease the drying time of cut forage, for example, with the use of chemical conditioners.

Baleage is an alternative harvesting method that requires no drying time. With this method, hay is often stored wrapped in plastic. The key to successful baleage production is bale density. Moisture content also affects baleage quality. One further factor to take into account is forage shrink, as it can result in a loss of the commodity that ranges from 5% to more than 40%.

Ensiled forages are the most common feed used on dairy farms, particularly in areas of the US where the weather doesn’t allow for easy feed drying to make good hay. Careful silage management is crucial as many factors can affect the quality of the silage.