At the Women in Agriculture Conference, Stevie White visited with Dana Zook, OSU Area Livestock Specialist, about the importance of providing quality forage for beef cattle.
“Because cows are grazers, they rely on forage for the basis of their nutrition, so it is important to know if the forage you are providing is high quality or low quality,” Zook said.
She explained that if it is high quality, producers may not have to feed as much of it, and perhaps could get away with complimenting it with a lower quality forage to save money. Alternately, if the forage is low quality, adding supplements may be necessary to avoid negative impacts to production efficiency, such as weight gain, maintaining condition for calving, breed back proficiency, and calving efficiency.
She said that a simple hay test is a great way to check the quality of your hay. “When you get an energy and protein analysis done, it gives insight into what other nutrients you cattle might need, in terms of supplementation.”
Protein is the biggest need for beef cows. So, once a hay test shows how much protein they are getting from their forage, a producer can compare different supplements based on the cost per pound of protein to determine which one they will use.
“The basic nutritional needs of cattle aren’t always an easy thing to figure out,” Zook said. “It depends on things like which stage of production they are in, their age, and purpose. Things like that all play a role in understanding what their nutritional needs specifically are from one animal to the next.”
Adding to the puzzle, Zook said that forage quality changes from year to year. “You might say that you have produced eight percent Bermuda grass hay for twenty years, but it probably varies a little bit. Of course, weather impacts forage quality, but so does fertility, depending on if you have native grass or an improved grass such as Bermuda. Bermuda and other improved grasses could use some fertilizer to maintain their quality.”
Zook also spoke of maturity trade-off which means that allowing your grasses to become more mature may sacrifice some of the quality of your hay in favor of a higher yield. The grasses are more nutritious when they are newly sprouted, but baling at that time would produce poor yields, so there is a fine line to baling at a time when yields are acceptable, and quality isn’t diminished.
“We want to find the balance between waiting until the end of the season or grazing or baling too early,” she explained. “Usually in hay meadows, we say by July 1. In Bermuda grass production, it is a little different. You will get multiple cuttings from multiple fertilizer applications.”
