MSU Extension offers agricultural services to assist farmers and ranchers

Published: 2022
By Sharla Sackman

MSU Extension in Prairie County offered many critical services to help agriculture in 2022. Nitrate tests are performed in the Prairie County MSU Extension office to test forage for the presence of the toxin nitrate. As a result of educating producers about the importance of testing their small grain forages for nitrate, producers brought 79 feed samples to be tested. Forty-two percent of the forage tested safe to feed, 44 percent tested at a level high enough that dilution of the feed would be necessary, and 19 percent tested as extremely high with the potential for lethal effects. This information provided producers with needed information to decide about the timing of cutting a crop, when grazing a crop was safe, and how to safely feed the forages tested. The Prairie County MSU Extension Agent balanced rations for feeding cows and for backgrounding calves to efficiently and economically utilize the feed resources producers have available. Forage quality testing is an important component of ration balancing and marketing forage for sale. MSU Extension assisted producers in submitting 44 forage samples to an accredited lab for nutrient analysis of crude protein, total digestible nutrients, and net energy values to aid in feeding and marketing forages.