WINNIPEG – Guessing can be costly when figuring out when to take the first cut of alfalfa.
Just ask Phil Friesen. He grows about 300 acres of alfalfa near the southern Manitoba town of Crystal City, that is exported to the dairy belt of the United States.
Last year, he cut some hay a bit late, and didn’t meet the high standards required for the lucrative market. Friesen found another market for the hay – it went to replacement heifers – but it cost him about $30 per tonne.
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This year Friesen eliminated the guess work. As part of a pilot project called Manitoba Green Gold, he got help in calculating how to get the best return from his forage acres.
Dennis Joosse, a forage specialist with Manitoba Agriculture, said the project is based on similar ones run in Ontario and Wisconsin.
Twice a week during June, 25 producers and agriculture representatives clipped alfalfa and sent it to a laboratory in Winnipeg for feed value tests.
Relative feed value is an index based on fibre percentages. The older the plant, the higher its fibre. Higher fibre means a lower RFV.
Producers like Friesen were shooting for RFVs of about 150, which is considered optimal in lucrative U.S. markets.
“Some people want more fibre … if they’re feeding mainly alfalfa in their forage, but the guys that I’m selling to, they want rocket fuel,” Friesen said, explaining that his hay is used to add protein to fibre-rich corn silage.
Joosse said test results showed RFVs dropped about five points per day during the first part of June. But the speed of the drop increased to about seven points per day by the middle of the month.
The best time for cutting many fields proved to be when farmers were finished seeding other crops.
He said some farmers were surprised because the fields were not yet at the traditional mid-bud or first bloom stage, but laboratory results showed they were ready to be cut.
Friesen said he cut his hay when lab results showed it had an RFV of a little over 200. This was to adjust for the 15 points per day lost during curing and baling, weather and soil conditions, and some grass he had growing in the stand. In the end, he had hay close to the 150 RFV mark.
He said he’s looking forward to taking part in the program in the future, especially since he seeded 600 more acres of alfalfa this year.
Joosse hopes by gathering data in upcoming years, average cutting dates for regions can be determined.
The program cost $5,000 to run this year because of lab costs, which were picked up by sponsors from seed, chemical and equipment companies. But Joosse said a new testing procedure should cut costs and lab time next year.
He said in the fall, a second part of the project will determine how much milk, beef or cash farmers can get from an acre of well-managed alfalfa.
