If you don’t make the management decisions for your farm, who will?

Late summer can be an excellent time to establish new forage stands. It is also a good time to seed in bare or thin spots in stands established this spring.

While we can’t control the weather, there are several things we can control that will improve the chances for successful forage stand establishment.

First, apply lime and […]

Summer grazing management is generally about slowing paddock rotations and providing the grass plant with an adequate recovery period before another grazing pass is made.

As if that were not enough of a management challenge, the pasture-based sheep and goat producer faces another twist on top of that. They must also manage summer grazing schedules […]

The high cost of fuel and animal feed make it more important than ever to get all you can out of your pasture.

How do you start to improve your pasture? Take a pasture assessment — what species of grass and legumes are growing? What we currently have growing in our pastures matches our soil type, […]

Salt is an item commonly used in livestock feed rations and because it’s used so regularly, it is easy to forget the importance of it in the diet.
Salt is the best source of both sodium and chloride, which all farm animals need.

Important nutrients

Sodium constitutes a very high percentage of the basic mineral elements contained […]

Everyone seems to like to talk about the weather and farmers probably lead the pack in a lot of those discussions.

It is either too dry like last summer, or too wet like this winter, or too cold to get the plants growing, or too hot to have the livestock out in the fields. In reality, […]

Many producers are looking for ways to improve their pasture yields. The good news is that there are several things that can be done.

You can improve pasture fertility. You could plant improved forage varieties. You can manage the grazing of a pasture by removing the livestock before the grazed plants regrow.

When you remove the livestock, […]

It was a rough winter for many hay fields in northern Ohio. Considering the stressful conditions last year, followed by a cold and wet winter, it is not surprising that many forage stands took a beating this winter.

Alfalfa fields seem to be the hardest hit. The 2007 Easter freeze followed by very dry conditions in […]

The high cost of fertilizers has led some graziers to conclude that they can no longer afford to fertilize their pastures.

Forage has now become an expensive feed. With hay prices expected to remain high in the foreseeable future, forage produced in a pasture situation becomes more valuable, as well.

The question might well be: Can we […]

Fertilizer prices are extremely high at this time. How do we economically stimulate pasture growth throughout the growing season?
In general, nitrogen has the greatest potential to influence pasture production, or dry matter production.
The economics of nitrogen application can be influenced by many factors, such as legume content, temperature, soil moisture content, grass species, timing of […]