FEED & NUTRITION

Pastures provide an inexpensive source of high-quality feed for livestock and have a positive impact on soil- and water-related processes. A temperate climate and the winter-dominated precipitation conditions of western Oregon are highly conducive to vegetation growth during the cool season.

What are your goals and objectives of producing cover crops? That is typically the first question I ask farmers when they start asking or talking about cover crops. Once I know what their goals and objectives are, that lets us start the planning process for cover crops to integrate them into their crop rotations and get the best return on investment.

Forage quality is the Achilles’ heel for any ruminant nutritionist. The better the forage coming out of storage, the better the nutritionist.

Lignin in corn silage and forage has been compared to the rebar in concrete, providing the structural integrity and strength to hold the road or driveway together.

In the wake of difficult growing conditions that plagued the Midwest in 2019, stretching feed with creative forage solutions was the topic discussed by dairy producer and forage consultant Daniel Olson of Lena, Wisconsin, and dairy producer David Johnson of the Western Upper Peninsula at the recent Great Lakes Regional Dairy Conference in Frankenmuth, Michigan.

Total mixed rations (TMRs) as we know them today are an invention of primarily the last 50 years. Prior to TMRs, dairy herds were fed predominantly forages with a limited amount of grain delivered at milking time.