EASTERN Green Gold ReportJune 6th

Hay Day is now as the crop has advance very quickly over the past 3 days

SITE / RFV PEAQ / RFV NIR / Height / CP
IDC East / 204 / 160 / 20 / 28
New Bothwell / 204 / 183 / 20 / 30
Grunthal / 199 / 161 / 21 / 26
Kleefeld / 210 / 158 / 19 / 23
LaBroqurie / 199 / 162 / 21 / 29
Beausejour S / 224 / 177 / 18 / 31
Beausejour N / 205 / 193 / 21 / 31
AVERAGE / 206 / 170 / 20 / 28

From Monday to Thursday we have seen the alfalfa grow about 3” and the RFV has dropped 19 points. This now has advanced Hay Day to today rather than the 8th.

For those of you that think your crop is too short remember you can gain 250 lbs/ inch of growth but lose 4-5 pts of RFV for each day you delay. With that type of drop and the promise of good weather the trade off of lbs of hay versus quality comes into question. If you are planning on a 3rd cut and take a cut every 28-35 days you need to count backwards from August 15th to see if you can get that 3rd cut off before you need to rest your alfalfa till after a fall killing frost.

You can access reports from the MFC website atGreen Gold 2013

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John McGregor

Frost Damage

Although frost was reported in most parts of the province here in the East there was only minor damage reported on some fields. What you see here is the result of the frost on one field. Although the damage was minimal the effect is dramatic. Notice how the frost killed the top leaves of the plant but didn’t affect the growing point. The new growth this week is above the damage. Losses in this field will be just the leaves that were affected. This may or may not show up in the RFV and/or the crude protein.

Grasses

I noticed that some of the grasses are starting to head out. This field had some fescue that was heading. Normally timothy should be heading but I didn’t see any. I only mention this as one of the suggestions for getting top quality forage is to time your cutting when the grasses start to head and alfalfa is in the late bud stage. Not all your hay needs to be of high quality and therefore if you are looking at quantity and still have some quality letting the grasses advance beyond seed set adds little to yield. For more information on when to cut alfalfa/grass mixtures click on either of the following articles

When to Make First Spring Cut of Alfalfa and Mixed Alfalfa/Grass

High Quality Hay Managementnd