Simple Feeding Tip #4: Test Your Forage

Test Your Forage…Otherwise You’re Just Guessing!
Yeah, yeah, you’ve heard this so many times. But do you do it regularly? In fact, one of the smartest (and often most overlooked) things you can do is test your forage.

Whether your animals eat hay, fresh pasture, haylage, silage, or fresh browse, forage usually makes up 50–100% of the diet for cattle, sheep, goats, horses, rabbits, and many other livestock. Yet many owners know more about the guaranteed analysis on a bag of feed than they do about the forage their animals eat every day.

Your forage is the foundation of your feeding program.
If you don’t know what’s in it, you’re guessing.
That’s why forage testing is so crucial.
No two hay fields are exactly alike.

Even hay cut from the same field can vary dramatically depending on:

• Grass and legume species
• Stage of maturity at harvest
• Soil fertility and mineral balance
• Rainfall and drought conditions
• Harvest timing
• Storage conditions
• First cutting versus later cuttings
  

Research has shown that crude protein in grass hay can range from less than 6% to well over 18%, while energy and mineral levels can vary just as dramatically depending on harvest maturity and growing conditions.

That means two bales that look nearly identical can provide very different nutrition.
The same is true for pasture.

Spring pasture is very different from late-summer pasture. Cool-season grasses differ from warm-season grasses. Rotationally grazed paddocks often differ from continuously grazed areas. Even different parts of the same pasture can vary based on soil type, drainage, fertility, and grazing pressure.

🔹 So what is the cost of guessing, rather than knowing, what’s in your forage?
Many livestock owners try to solve most nutritional concerns by purchasing a new feed, another supplement, new mineral, or adding to the ration.

Low energy? Add grain.
Poor coat? Add oil.
Poor growth? Add protein.
Weak topline? Add amino acids.
Low fertility? Add another mineral.

Sometimes those supplements are exactly what’s needed.
But sometimes they aren’t.

If your forage already contains adequate protein, adding more may do little besides increase feed costs.
If your hay already supplies sufficient calcium, adding more could be detrimental, not helpful.

If your mineral program already provides adequate selenium, or your local soils naturally contain elevated selenium, adding additional selenium could be fatal. Likewise, excessive iron in forage or water (extremely common in most parts of the U.S.) can interfere with the absorption of copper, zinc, and manganese, even when those minerals are present in the diet.

The goal isn’t simply to provide more nutrients.
It’s to provide the right nutrients in the right amounts.
Testing helps you avoid both deficiencies and excesses.

🔹Can you already hear yourself saying “I don’t need to test my hay…”?
Let’s look at some of the most common reasons people skip forage testing.

“I’ve bought hay from the same farmer for years.”
That’s great, but weather changes every year. Rainfall, fertility, harvest timing, and plant maturity can all change the nutritional value of a crop.

“I can tell good hay by looking at it.”
Color, smell, and leafiness tell you a lot about quality and freshness – but they can’t tell you protein, digestible energy, sugar levels, mineral content, or trace element concentrations.

“My animals look healthy.”
Many nutritional imbalances develop slowly. Animals often compensate long before obvious signs appear.

“Testing costs too much.”
A typical forage analysis often costs less than a single bag of premium feed or supplement. The information can save far more than it costs by helping you avoid unnecessary purchases and formulate a more balanced ration.

🔹 Practical ways to evaluate your forage
A laboratory forage analysis is still the gold standard.

Many county Extension offices, feed mills, forage laboratories, and nutrition companies offer affordable testing. The most useful reports typically include:
✔ Dry Matter
✔ Crude Protein
✔ Fiber (ADF & NDF)
✔ Total Digestible Nutrients (TDN) or Relative Feed Value/Quality
✔ Macro minerals (calcium, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, sulfur)
✔ Trace minerals when needed

If you’re feeding horses or animals with metabolic concerns, you may also want to test for non-structural carbohydrates (NSC), water-soluble carbohydrates (WSC), ethanol-soluble carbohydrates (ESC), and starch.

🔹 What can you do at home?
While nothing replaces a laboratory analysis, you can still learn a great deal by just taking the time to observe your forage.

Ask yourself:
Is it leafy or stemmy?
Does it smell fresh and sweet, or musty and moldy?
Are there weeds or undesirable plants?
Is there excessive dust?
How much do the animals actually leave behind?
Is manure loose, firm, or full of long fiber?
Are animals maintaining body condition, milk production, growth, or topline?

Pasture can also be assessed without expensive equipment.
Simple observation can tell you quite a bit. Walk your pasture. If grass barely covers your boot tops, available forage is becoming limited. If you’re consistently grazing below about 3–4 inches on cool-season grasses, both forage production and pasture recovery begin to suffer.

You can also estimate pasture availability by clipping all the forage inside a known square (such as a 1-foot × 1-foot frame), drying and weighing it, then using published conversion factors to estimate pounds of dry matter per acre. While not perfect, this provides a much better estimate than guessing by eye.

Many universities also provide grazing sticks and pasture rulers that estimate forage mass based on sward height and density – simple tools that can help determine when it’s time to rotate animals or supplement with stored forage.

🔹 Your forage drives your entire feeding program
Every supplement, mineral, grain mix, or concentrate should complement your forage – not compensate for an unknown forage.

When you understand what your pasture or hay already provides, you can:
✔ Feed more precisely
✔ Avoid unnecessary supplements
✔ Reduce feed costs
✔ Prevent nutrient deficiencies
✔ Avoid excessive mineral intake or toxicities
✔ Improve animal health and performance

Even though we are a feed company, we really believe good nutrition doesn’t begin in the feed bin.
It begins in the pasture, the hay field, and the forage your animals consume every single day.
Good feeding doesn’t have to be complicated, it just has to start with knowing what’s already on the menu.

Have you performed a forage analysis and received information that altered your feed program? Share in the comments!