Hay cores provide valuable information about your hay quality.  The results you’ll get from a simple forage test  will be similar to that of a Nutrition Label on the back of your favorite food.  You will know exactly what you are feeding your livestock, and what, if anything, your animals are missing in their diets.

Contact the District at 970-724-3456 to borrow our hay corer or have us send your hay in for testing.
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4 Main Reasons to Test:

1. Visual evaluations do NOT tell the whole story
   1. Green is not always good
   2. Brown is not always bad
2. It’s the only way to balance rations
   1. Prioritize feeding of different lots of hay based on nutritional needs of animals
   2. Different classes of animals have difference nutritional needs (i.e. dry cows vs. heifers vs. steers vs. bulls)
3. It’s one measure of changes in hay management
4. It can aid in marketing of hay for sale

Factors Affecting Forage Quality:

1. Maturity Stage: increased maturity equals decreased forage quality. 
   1. For cool-season grasses—Digestibilty can decrease by 0.33-0.5% per day after the first 2-3 weeks of growth until it reaches 50% or less. 
   2. Crude protein yield increases but the concentration of crude protein decreases due to nitrogen dilution.  The question because, can a cow eat enough forage to meet her nutritional needs or will she get full before that happens?
2. Species differences:
   1. Legumes typically produce higher forage quality than grasses
      1. Legumes have higher protein content, lower fiber content, and better intake and digestibility rates than grasses. 
3. Nitrogen Fertilization:
   1. Will most likely increase the productivity of the field in terms of yield (lbs/acre produced); however, the quality of the hay may or may not benefit from the added nitrogen.  Depending on the timing of harvest, the quality of the hay may actually decline.  As mentioned previously, the concentration of crude protein goes down as the grass grows taller.  The digestibility also decreases due to the increase in fibrous stems.  According to Joe, if you are planning to fertilize, the biggest bang for your buck in terms of pounds of Nitrogen put on, relating to pounds of forage produced, is 60-80 lbs of N/acre.  Mark Volt also says that you can expect about 25 pounds of hay for every pound of Nitrogen put on. 
4. Rain during Curing:
   1. Decreased digestibility due to leaching of highly soluble molecules and prolonged respiration causing loss of carbohydrates. 
   2. Crude Protein may or may not change because protein is a bigger molecule and is less prone to leaching. 
   3. It is worse to have hay rained on days after cutting, rather than immediately following cutting, because cell walls have had time to rupture.  If rained on right after cutting, cell walls are still intact and nutrients are retained within the cell.
5. Daily Fluctuations:
   1. Hay cut in the afternoon will have higher sugar content than hay cut in the morning because plants accumulate carbohydrates during the day but use them at night.  Foraging studies have backed this up by showing that cattle prefer afternoon cut forage over morning cut forage.