Cutting Ash Content

SOURCE: Fae Holin, Hay & Forage Grower, February 2009

If you have clouds of dust trailing your rake, you’re probably adding unnecessary ash to your forage. That can lower its quality and, if it’s fed to dairy cows, the amount of milk produced, says Dan Undersander, extension forage specialist at the University of Wisconsin (UW).

A certain amount of ash is unavoidable. Grass plants contain about 6% ash, and alfalfa holds nearly 8%. But the harvesting and handling of hay or silage, on average, adds 4% more ash, for an average of 10-12% ash, according to UW-Marshfield lab results.
That’s about 2% too much, Undersander believes. Some results show even higher amounts of ash – one sample contained 18% ash, he says. “That guy was feeding 1 lb of dirt for every 4 lbs of hay. Do you think his cows produced a lot of milk? I suspect not,” he says. By limiting added ash to just 2%, “you’ve improved the quality of your product,” Undersander adds.

Here are his suggestions to meet that goal:

• Cut the crop at least 3-3½” high. “If you cut alfalfa shorter you get a little more tonnage, but as you go below 3”, especially when the soil is dry, you’re going to be picking up more dirt.”

• Change your disc mower knives from standard to flat. “The standard knife has a 14-degree angle and it creates a little vacuum. On first cutting when the ground is we, it doesn’t make any difference; on second and third, when the ground is dry, you can easily pick up 1-2% ash.”

• Switch from narrow to wide swaths if you haven’t already. “When you go to a wide swath, that swath stays on top of the stubble. If you make a narrow windrow it sinks down onto the ground, and when you pick up the windrow, you see a layer of dirt on the underside.”

• Keep rake tines from scraping the ground. “It’s worthwhile to have a level field,” he adds.

• Be careful when feeding out of bunker silos on bare ground during rainy weather.

“This is one of the reasons why we’ve always encouraged people to put their bunkers either on asphalt or concrete,” says Undersander.

Moldy Hay

This year’s weather made harvesting hay difficult to say the least. In many instances, hay was damaged by rain between cutting and harvesting. This has lead to an influx of calls with the question “is moldy hay safe to feed to cattle?” Moldy hay has been fed to cattle as long as we have had machinery to harvest hay. So does that mean that it is safe? The short answer is not really.

Moldy hay can contain mycotoxins that will results in poor animal performance and sometimes death. Tests can be ran for mycotoxins, however, a standard (affordable) test only tests for a few of mycotoxins that exist. Furthermore, mycotoxins may be patchy. There may only be 1 out of 10 bales contain a deadly mycotoxins making it very difficult to detect when sampling. Even if a mycotoxins test results are negative, the only assumption that can be made is that the sample submitted did not contain mycotoxins that could be found from the test. As a standard rule of thumb, it is not advisable to feed moldy hay. So what should be done with moldy hay?

The safest option would be to land apply the hay as a fertilizer where there are no cattle grazing. A ton of fescue hay contains approximately 35 pounds of nitrogen, 18pounds of phosphorus and 50 pounds of potassium.

Many farmers have gotten by in the past by limiting the amount of moldy hay fed to cattle. Like all things, the dose makes the poison. Hay that contains small amounts of mycotoxins can be diluted with other non-moldy grain and hay and animals will perform at or near optimal performance if the ration is balanced accordingly.