Forage Newsletter | August 2020
The Dairy One Forage Lab excels in providing high quality analyses and customer service. Our goal is to provide analytical services designed to meet the expanding demands of modern agriculture. New technology and traditional methods are combined to deliver fast, accurate results.
Summer Haylage
Haylage season is well under way. With the varying harvest times, it is always hard to distinguish first cutting from subsequent cuttings. For the summary data below, we extracted all haylage samples from New York addresses submitted to our lab from May 1 to July 30 in 2019 and 2020. We generated tables for both fresh and fermented samples as we observe those labels used interchangeably at times by our customers. 

The initial trend this year, even amid very dry summer conditions, is an overall more digestible feed with other parameters not far behind. This would align well with observations in other dry years. While there has been little moisture available in the middle of the season, the wet spring and high temperatures have allowed the plant to grow without significant lignification. In specifically targeting the uNDFom 30hr, you’ll note that many of these forages are disappearing quickly and we would encourage the use of the 12-hour fiber digestibility time point to better capture the profile of the fast pool. More on this below. 
AMTS Update
Many of our customers upload their results into ration software and we pride ourselves on working in unison with the requirements of the models. AMTS users received an update last month that included another uNDFom timepoint for forages to better capture the fast pool. The diagram below shows the current status of the pool model. 
(Mertens, 1977; Raffrenato and Van Amburgh, 2010; Cotanch et al., 2014)

We are very happy to see the addition of the 4th timepoint in the fast pool for forages, measured at 12 hours. We are working on our ability to offer the 12-hour NDFD timepoint in our Forage NIR Pro package. In the meantime, our lab stands ready to offer it by wet chemistry. The appropriate service code has been added to our sample submission form. Please be sure you are using our most current version, always available on our website. Our forage wet chemistry timepoints package is code (585) and includes the 30, 120, and 240hr timepoints. The 12-hour can simply be added using code (575). Please direct any questions regarding forage digestibility to sarah.fessenden@dairyone.com.
How big is your sample?
We have been receiving an increased number of samples this harvest season that are exceeding our recommended sample size. This practice results in additional labor at the lab for handling, splitting, drying, and grinding the sample. This applies to all samples but certainly in particular to alfalfa hay samples as the only way to avoid bias and ensure representativeness is to grind the entire sample.

In March of 2019 we established a policy to attach a handling fee to samples that exceeded our guidelines. If the sample collected using the guidelines exceeds a 1-quart sized bag, please take an appropriate and representative sub-sample of the larger sample before sending it to the lab. When it comes to hay, a hay probe is the best way to obtain a representative sample that will easily fit in a quart sized sample bag. Sending in a section of the bale or a whole bale will result in a sample handling fee applied to your account. 
Out with the old, in with the new
Please be sure to use the most current version of our sample submission form. We are working to standardize the visual format across our forms for ease of use by our customers and to facilitate data entry into our lab information system for our customer support team. Proper form use is important to ensure proper processing of your analysis requests. Incomplete or missing information slows the entire process. Please fill out the submission form completely. In our March 2019 update, we added a policy of charging $2.00 for any incomplete paperwork. We have not been enforcing this policy. This charge can and will be applied at our discretion beginning August 31, 2020.
Discontinuing Printed Reports

The Dairy One Forage Lab is continually striving to bring better, cost effective solutions to our customers and allied industry. Due to an increase in demand for digital results, last year we transitioned to delivering results via email with an option to request a printed copy of reports. As of August 31, 2020 we will discontinue all printing and mailing of reports. Results will continue to be emailed in our standard formats: .xml, .pdf, and .csv. If you have questions or need to update the email addresses associated with your account please email forage@dairyone.com.

We look forward to sharing more developments in our reports soon!
Dairy One Forage Laboratory | 730 Warren Road, Ithaca NY 14850
800.344.2697 Ext. 9962 | F: 607.257.1350