It has been an unforgiving year in terms of rainfall, and many producers have not been able to grow enough hay for themselves and to sell. It is important for those who buy hay to go ahead and purchase what you need now instead of waiting for winter months when hay will be even more scarce and costly.
Most hay now has a great visual appraisal, as it has not been left outside to weather. We have tightly wrapped bales, maybe green in color, with that sweet hay smell we all love. We will put this hay up for storage to feed or sell throughout the winter. The question is, is visual appraisal alone good enough to determine the quality of this hay?
I have known many hay producers and hay buyers that use their senses to determine quality of hay to know how much to charge, how much to feed, and how much to pay for their hay. As much as we are tempted to make these decisions based on our senses, we need to be willing to send forage samples into the lab to know without a doubt what the quality of our hay is. Hay that does not fit our criteria of hay beauty can still be sufficient in nutrients for your animal’s stage of growth, and you could be overfeeding hay or spending money on grain that you do not need. Beauty is sometimes only windrow deep when it comes to hay!
With the current cost of inputs to produce hay, producers need to know the quality of their hay as to not undercharge, and hay buyers need to know when not to overpay. A hay analysis can give us the information we need to know to determine the monetary value of our hay is. A basic forage test through the Extension office will give us the Moisture Content, Crude Protein, Acid Detergent Fiber (ADF), Total digestible Nutrients (TDN, and Net energy at the cost of $25.
This test will inform us on the hay’s ability to grow or maintain livestock and its ability to be utilized by the animal. This information can also tell us if we need to supplement or not with grain, either way this will save us time and money in getting our livestock to market weight or maintaining our horse’s good health without overspending or underspending on supplemental feed.
