Feed quality and nutrition

Proper management of a doe’s dry period can have significant impacts on the doe’s longevity and productivity as well as kid survival. In this second article in a two-part series, experts discuss nutrition strategies that can lead to success in the dry period.

By Dr. Michelle Chang-Der Bedrosian, Vita Plus | Everyone has their own way of reading a forage lab report and focusing on the information they feel is most important to them. As a forage specialist, I focus on the following items in this order.

In our pursuit for greater alfalfa yield per acre, we created a situation of loss.  What I mean is our alfalfa variety selection process has pushed farmers to select higher fall-dormancy-scored alfalfas that recover more quickly after cuttings, stay vegetative longer into the fall, and green-up more quickly in the spring.  This is accomplished through plant breeding and selection for plants that exhibit faster regrowth.  These varieties possess the desired production traits for higher yields per acre and exhibit crowns that are not as deeply set into the soil.

By Jon Urness, Vita Plus national forage specialist, retired
Nutritionists sometimes use RFV and RFQ to describe how a certain forage is feeding.  However, these two values mean more when you compare the relative dollar value of different forages in the market.