Don’t Fail Your Hay Test

By Amber Friedrichsen

Now that farmers have shifted from harvesting forage and grazing pastures to selling and feeding hay, forage analysis should be critical to marketing and purchasing decisions. But not all sellers and buyers test their hay products, even though knowing forage quality is essential to both parties.

On one hand, sellers can use this information to set their price and inform buyers, as well as to track production performance and identify areas for improvement. On the other hand, livestock producers must know forage quality to build winter feeding programs that meet their animals’ nutrient needs.

But to ensure those forage analysis results are useful, farmers must know how to take a proper hay sample. Luckily, the National Forage Testing Association (NFTA) provides a research-proven, standardized protocol to do so.

As stated by NFTA, hundreds of thousands of pounds of highly variable plant material must be represented in a single, thumbnail-sized sample. “This sample must not only represent the proper leaf-stem ratio and the legume-grass mix, but also the spotty presence of weeds. Sampling variation is a significant problem in hay testing and causes millions of dollars in lost revenue each year by either the buyer, seller, or in animal performance,” the association asserts.