Hay is an agricultural product that varies greatly in nutritional quality. The ‘hay market’ frequently uses descriptive terms like ‘dairy quality,, ‘beef-cow quality’ or more quantitative terms like ‘premium,’ ‘good’, and ‘fair’; which have some forage testing guidelines to place hay lots in these categories. For hay, alfalfa- or grass-dominant, to be good enough to be marketed as ‘dairy quality’ or ‘premium,’ it has to be harvested at a growth stage where the plant is composed of a high leaf proportion and less fibrous stems. Forage harvested and stored as hay-crop silage can be placed into the same general nutritional categories.
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