In response to the current interest in sustainable development of dairy farms, perennial grass forage crops have emerged as potential solutions to some environmental management challenges now encountered on intensively managed dairy farms (Cherney andCherney, 1998). Grain surpluses and low grain prices often dictate that milk be produced with as little forage as possible. In the future it is likely that grain surpluses will decrease and maximum utilization of forages will be needed to maintain a competitive dairy industry. In addition, the impact of animal wastes on environmental quality is likely to increase the use of forages (Wang et al. 2000a). Forage production in an integrated farming system has the potential to improve the recycling and balance of nutrients (Wang et al. 2000b). Grasses may have some advantages over legumes in this area because of their ability to use excess farm generated N (Cherney and Cherney, 1993). Many dairy farms have land that is poorly suited to growing alfalfa because of low pH or poorly drained soils (Cherney and Kallenbach, 2006). Grasses will have advantages over legumes in these areas because they can use nitrogen from manure, support vehicle traffic and tolerate marginal soils. Perennial grass can also removeover twice the nitrogen/acre than corn (Kanneganti and Klausner, 1994). High yields are possible, but in many cases, forage quality is not where it should be. Significant advances have been made in recent years in recognizing the potential of well-managed grasses, but on average the level of management is still not as high as with alfalfa (Cherney et al., 2006b). Good harvest management for the season is set at the spring forage harvest. Crucial to good management is harvesting at optimum forage quality, but how is that optimum determined?
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