Be Alert for Decline in Forage Quality
Variability of forage quality can result in forage deficiencies and a lack of consistent nutrition delivered to your cattle.
Forage quality variability is especially apparent as the season progresses through summer and fall. Environmental changes such as rainfall, soil moisture profile and temperature, combined with normal changing growth stages of the forages, affect quality.
By understanding forage quality and how it changes through time, you can get a pretty good idea whether forage is meeting your animals’ needs.
Three Stages of Growth
All pasture forages progress through three specific stages of growth. Knowing these stages can help you recognize when forage quality is declining. The stages include:
1. Lush - Very green, high moisture with lots of leaf material. Provided adequate rainfall and growing conditions exist, forage is very lush early in the growing season and after each cutting of hay. Pasture at this stage is all leaf and no stem. It is high in quality, containing adequate protein, energy and minerals.
2. Transitional - As the season progresses and forage continues to grow; it goes through a transition stage. In this stage, there is less leaf and more stem development and seed heads. During this stage, quality declines. Protein, energy and mineral content begin to drop rapidly.
3. Mature - After the transitional phase, forage proceeds to full maturity. When it is mature, even though it may still be green, it contains mostly seed heads and stems and very little leaf material. Mature forage is poor in quality and has inadequate protein, energy and minerals to nutritionally sustain cattle.
Getting the Most Forage Value
Land O’Lakes Feed’s RangeLand Ration Manager® is a 100 percent vitamin-and-trace-mineral-fortified feed supplement that can help you obtain the most value from forages at all stages.
RangeLand Ration Manager® supplement leveraged more than 30 years of research to enable it to dependably control intake based on forage quality and the cattle’s nutritional requirements.
Because the RangeLand Ration Manager® supplement is offered to cattle free-choice in self feeders, it is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This decreases delivery cost of supplementation, compared to hand feeding on a daily or every-other-day basis.
The Land O’Lakes Feed RangeLand® product line also includes one-use, biodegradable RangeLand® supplement Tubs that eliminate the bio-security risks associated with returnable containers.
The RangeLand Tub has a unique design that builds on an effectively proven intake-management technology that assures cattle cannot bite off or chew the product. It must be consumed by licking only, as the surface softens by moisture in the air and moisture from animal saliva. Intake can be further controlled by the number of animals fed per tub.
RangeLand® supplement Tubs are formulated to enhance forage utilization by providing consistent supplement intake of protein, energy, vitamins and minerals. Each self-fed, nutritionally-balanced RangeLand® supplement Tub will supply protein, energy, and other valuable nutrients in a low-moisture cooked-molasses formula designed to deliver consistent consumption.
RangeLand® supplement Tubs deliver the protein and energy your herd needs.