Haylage season is well under way. With the varying harvest times, it is always hard to distinguish first cutting from subsequent cuttings. For the summary data below, we extracted all haylage samples from New York addresses submitted to our lab from May 1 to July 30 in 2019 and 2020. We generated tables for both fresh and fermented samples as we observe those labels used interchangeably at times by our customers.
The initial trend this year, even amid very dry summer conditions, is an overall more digestible feed with other parameters not far behind. This would align well with observations in other dry years. While there has been little moisture available in the middle of the season, the wet spring and high temperatures have allowed the plant to grow without significant lignification. In specifically targeting the uNDFom 30hr, you’ll note that many of these forages are disappearing quickly and we would encourage the use of the 12-hour fiber digestibility time point to better capture the profile of the fast pool. More on this below.