When it comes to alfalfa, many growers believe they have to choose quality, yield or productivity and that increasing one element will automatically reduce the others.

Fortunately, you don’t have to trade one for the other, if you keep a few fundamentals in mind:

• Cut later. Many recent studies have shown the best time of day to cut alfalfa to achieve maximum quality is in the afternoon.

Many producers throughout the country keep enduring tough weather conditions.

In the last five years, the region has experienced five different records or near-records for the last 40 years.

We have faced the driest, the wettest and the warmest fall, the coldest spring and the most extreme winter-spring temperature changes.

Pasture systems support their own unique plant and animal species. The need to control weeds in pastures and reduce herbicide and mowing cost to control undesirable species has increased due to higher fuel and chemical prices.

Multi-species grazing is the practice of grazing more than one kind of livestock (cattle, sheep and/or goats and horses) in a diverse pasture or land, not necessarily at the same time but within the same grazing season.

This practice has the benefits of promoting more uniform grazing of weeds and forbs, increasing pasture productivity, reducing fuel loads of unwanted vegetation and perhaps reducing predation losses.

Small-grain crops are used extensively in some areas for various types of forage production and animal feeding operations.

Small grains used to the greatest extent are wheat and triticale; however, rye, barley and oats are utilized also.

All of these species have the potential to fill gaps between summer crops to supply year-round, high-quality feed to meet the constant and high nutritional demands of lactating dairy cows.