As if low milk prices weren’t challenging enough for Wisconsin dairy farmers – now they may have to start questioning what their hay supplies are going to look like this year.
Dr. Dan Undersander, UW-Extension Forage Specialist, is now estimating approximately 75-100,000 hay acres in the state may have suffered some kind of winter damage this year. Undersander tells Pam Jahnke that there’s pockets of damage in southwest Wisconsin, and northeast Wisconsin from his early estimates. Grant, Lafayette and Iowa counties have been hard hit, along with Shawano, Brown, Outagamie and Manitowoc counties. Undersander says anywhere we have heavy soil seems to be the areas with the great threat. Fields are just greening up in northwest Wisconsin, so that story is yet to be told.
“It was a fairly mild winter, but we didn’t have as much snow cover as we needed for insulation,” Undersander says. Now the challenge is trying to decide what fields to keep, and which to plow down. Undersander stresses that growers should have at least 55 plants in a square foot across the field to justify keeping it. He acknowledges that many farms will be tempted to keep stands that are a little thinner, but he advises sticking with 55 plants as the minimum.
