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Methods of Forage Utilization in the Midwest^{1, 2,}

Department of Dairy Husbandry, University of Wisconsin, Madison

ABSTRACT

There is little doubt that the cheapest source of nutrients: nitrogen, energy, minerals, and vitamins, for our dairy cattle is forage. Yet we have spent relatively more in time and energy in making and feeding a better concentrate than we have in feeding a better roughage. Our overall picture of summer forage utilization is inefficient but, fortunately, farmers are coming to the realization that their pastures can be as productive as most of their good crop acres.

In the Middle West, grazing cropland acres may become a thing of the past. Dairy farmers are coming slowly but definitely to the realization that pasturing is not the most efficient method of harvesting forage. Farmers are moving the milking herd out of unproductive woody and hilly land, spurred largely by the ever-present and inevitable summer slump. This drop in milk production, which occurs every year, is usually counteracted by supplemental feeding of hay and silage, as well as by supplying better forages, primarily, drought-resistant grasses, grass legume mixes and, in recent years, by going to better methods of pasturing, such as rotation and strip grazing.

¹ Presented at the joint meeting of the American Grassland Council and the American Dairy Science Association at Raleigh, North Carolina, June, 1958.

² Published with the approval of the Director of the Wisconsin Agricultural Experiment Station.