Hay Quality

By: Jimmy Parker

Hay is undoubtedly one of the costliest inputs in the cattle industry. The most expensive hay is usually way too high to feed and the cheap hay costs far more than it is worth. So how do you decide which hay is what you need?

I guess this is where we need to do our quota of math for the month. I know most people don’t like math but bear with me and I will go through it and hopefully make sense. Let’s talk about the animals’ needs and look at a few examples.

If you have had livestock for very long you probably know that an animal’s needs change dramatically as their age and stage of production changes. Mature dry cows in mid to late gestation have relatively low nutritional needs, mature lactating cows with a 60- or 90-day-old calf have fairly high needs and lactating first-calf heifers that are milking heavily have really high needs. The same roll of hay won’t be correct for those three different cows.

Poor quality hay could be defined as less than 8% protein and less than 52% TDN. It won’t meet the needs of any of the cattle listed above in all weather conditions without some supplementation but clearly it will come closer to meeting the needs of the dry cow than the lactating heifer and those kinds of things should be kept in mind as you decide which bales to feed to which animals and when to feed what you have.

Medium-quality hay will be in the 8-11% protein range and from about 52-57% TDN. This hay should get most dry cows by but still won’t meet the needs of those that are lactating heavily.

Good hay will be above 12% protein and above 58% in TDN and is fairly rare to find in the Southeast. It will meet the needs of cattle through a good portion of their production cycles but will still fall short when the higher-producing cattle are considered, and supplementation will still be needed in some cases.

To try and keep things simple, let’s look at a 1,000- pound dry cow versus a 1,000-pound lactating cow with good milking ability. The dry cow will need hay that is 8% protein and 50% TDN. She will meet her needs if she eats 20-30 pounds of a hay that was cut at a decent maturity level. When we do the math, it would take 17 pounds of a higher-end low-quality hay to meet her protein needs. It would take about the same amount to meet her TDN requirement. Animals in this category would be an ideal place to feed that medium and lower quality hay.

The lactating cow is a different story. She will need a hay or hay and feed combination that is over 13% protein and around 70% TDN. She could eat enough of a good hay to meet her protein requirement in some cases. It would be beyond rare for a hay in Alabama to meet her TDN requirement and supplemental feeds would be needed to maximize production and prevent significant weight loss.

There is no way to look at a bale of hay and tell what nutrients it contains without doing an actual hay test. I see several hay samples each year and far more fall into the poor-quality range than the good range. Sending in a hay sample and knowing what you are dealing with before you get into problems with thin cattle will pay you every time. It will be much cheaper to prevent the problems that are caused by underfeeding than to try and fix them when they become critical in late winter.

Thin cattle hurt you in so many ways. Thin cows wean lighter calves; they don’t breed back as well, if at all, and they are just more likely to have health issues and higher vet bills when compared to cattle that have adequate nutrition. Those factors are hard to put accurate dollar values on but they are real and can be prevented now by knowing what is in your hay and feeding the right bale to the correct cattle at the right time.

Good hay will be above 12% protein and above 58% in TDN and is fairly rare to find in the Southeast.