Category Archives: Alfalfa Hay

At Barr-Ag, we take up to three cuts of the early maturing varieties of alfalfa from our irrigated farms. This alfalfa hay is sought after for its higher protein content. The later maturing variety is grown on our dryland properties and we harvest up to two cuts. All of our alfalfa hay is non-GMO.

High Quality Forage Benefits Dairy Cows

There are many benefits of high quality forage, as the saying goes: you get what you pay for.  You can reverse that statement by saying you don’t get what you don’t pay for.  Or even that you could pay for it later!  Studies have shown that when dairy producers invest in high quality forage they will see a valuable return on that investment.

Choosing High Quality Forage

Optimal animal performance can improve with high quality forage.  It is essential for weight gain, producing higher levels of milk, increasing reproduction success, and farm’s profits.  It’s important to give your dairy cows the appropriate type and amount of feed according to their specific nutritional needs.  Factors that could help define these needs include: sex, age, species, and production status.

When choosing your high quality forage for either beef or dairy cows it’s also important to think about the follow factors: whether the cows will eat the feed, how much of the feed they will actually eat measured against how much energy is required for their specific activity (milk production, breeding, beef production, etc.), digestibility, nutrient content, and any negative factors the forage might have on a specific cattle group.

High quality forage performs at its best when it is harvested young.  As crops like alfalfa mature the fiber content increases, lowering the quality.  Forage that is too high in fiber slows digestion.  With slower digestion the animal will not take in as much and might not consume enough energy to meet their activity requirements.

High Quality Forage Boosts Milk Production in Dairy Cows

Milk production has high nutrient demands on dairy cows!  Dairy cows have to consume large quantities of food to consume enough energy to keep producing milk.  In some cases a dairy cow cannot physically eat enough feed to meet the requirements of milk production; and the cow’s body fat could start depleting in an attempt to meet those energy requirements.  This is a problem.

High quality forage like Alfalfa hay can greatly benefit dairy cows and milk production.  Alfalfa hay contains less neutral detergent fiber and is more digestible.  Also, high quality forage like early harvest alfalfa is lower in fermentable fibre and passes through the digestive system faster, allowing the cow to consume more.  That means dairy cows that consume high quality forage are able to increase both their energy intake and total milk produced.  Talk about getting your cake (alfalfa hay) and eating it too!

Milk that is produced with a higher fat concentration is can usually be sold for a premium.  Since high quality forage is high in the right type of fiber it also supports milk fat production, which in turn affects the producer’s bottom line.

A study came out of the University of Wisconsin that was able to conclude that the milk response of dairy cows fed different levels of alfalfa forage quality was improved when fed more high quality forage.  They were able to prove that high quality forage contains more energy and also allows dairy cows to eat more!

The study also tested adding a concentrate like grain to lower quality forage to try to offset reduced milk production resulting from low quality feed.  High producing dairy cows are sometimes fed concentrates to help boost the energy content of their feed.  Even adding this concentrate could not improve the results of the feed.  Here are their examples:

Early bloom alfalfa with 54% concentrate produced almost as much milk as pre-bloom alfalfa with 20% concentrate, but no amount of concentrate would produced over 70 lb of fat corrected milk from mid or full bloom alfalfa.  Further, the 71%-concentrate formulations are not sustainable, due to animal health problems associated with low fiber. 

They also found that the actual fat concentration of the milk produced fell as the added concentrate increased.  With milk with high fat concentration going for top dollar, adding too much concentrate to the feed could affect a dairy producer’s profit.

View their study results and further research on high quality forage.

 

Sources:  http://www.extension.org/pages/26278/in-vivo-digestibility-of-forages, http://extension.umass.edu/cdle/fact-sheets/harvest-management-high-quality-alfalfa-hay

 

 

Exporting Offical Canadian Grains

There are many different kinds of grains grown in Canada that are available for export around the globe. Did you know that Canada has “official grains”? These specific grains are regulated and secured under the Canada Grain Act by the Canadian Grain Commission.

Official Canadian grains include:

Cereals: Cereal grains are staple crops and are grown more around the world than any other kind of crop. Cereal grains include barley, oats, rye, triticale and wheat.

Oilseeds: Oilseeds produce oil and have been used globally for thousands of years. They can be used to make cooking oil, soap, and industrial lubricants. Oilseeds grown in Canada include canola, flaxseed, mustard, rapeseed, safflower seed, solin, soybeans and sunflower seed

Pulses: Pulse grains include crops like beans, chick peas, fababeans, lentils and peas. These crops are all members of the legume family and are pod-bearing plants that produce dry edible seeds. Pulse crops are good for feed for animals and food for humans too. They are very nutritious providing protein, fibre, complex carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals.

Mixed grain: Mixed grain on export is graded in accordance with export specifications and consist of any mixtures of wheat, rye, barley, oats triticale, wild oats and domestic of wild oat groats.

Other crops like buckwheat and corn are called pseudocereals and are also official Canadian grains. Pseudocereals are used like cereal but are not part of the grass family.

All of these grains are regulated under the Canada Grain Act by the Canadian Grain Commission. Policies and procedures include the handling of these grains and providing rules under which the entire Canadian grain industry operates. These regulations, policies and procedures guide the grain industry by assessing grain quality and monitoring the weighing of grain that is shipped to Canadian and international markets.

The Canadian Grain Commission provides international buyers of Canadian grain with an unbiased, third party agency. System monitoring is in place and followed closely by hay and grain exporters like Barr-Ag Hay and Grain Exporters to ensure the best quality of grain is produced and the best harvesting, packaging, storing and shipping methods are used when exporting overseas.

Official Canadian grains like oats, barley, wheat, oilseeds and pulse grains are available from Barr-Agg. Barr-Ag either produces the grains at our farm along the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains in Alberta, or it is purchased from a network of local Canadian producers who follow strict growing protocols and quality control standards. All are available for international export.  Learn more.

Learn more about the Canada Grain Act and the Canadian Grain Commission.