Division of Extension
Published: Sept. 20, 2024 Cutting alfalfa when the weather is good can be tempting, but late fall cuttings could be damaging to long term alfalfa productivity and stand persistence. Why it might be bad to cut now As a perennial crop, one must manage alfalfa with not just this year but the next year in […]
In the September 11, 2024 Badger Crop Connect webinar, Dr. Harkirat Kaur, a new extension specialist at UW–Madison, introduced herself and shared her background, education, and research experiences.
In the September 11, 2024 Badger Crop Connect webinar, Kevin Jarek discussed the challenges faced in corn silage and dry down this year.
This comprehensive resource provides a visual overview of the potassium (K) cycle and breaks down the crucial role K plays in soils and crop growth to help you optimize your crop yield.
Many factors affect crop yield; only one of them is fertilizer. The six factors listed here have a strong relationship with consistently better-yielding areas of a farm field.
We’re starting to see some foliar diseases come into corn in WI, which may affect harvest timing and management. We’re not overly concerned; however, the time is right to be proactive and scout, scout, scout!
From various research efforts into the physiology of alfalfa winter survival, it appears that many of these root reserve compounds are positively linked to winter survival, so preserving them can aid our alfalfa stand in surviving winter and thriving the following spring. Manipulating the time of fall cutting allows us to control the stores of these compounds to give the best chance at winter survival of our alfalfa stands.
The August 14 Badger Crop Connect webinar featured Dr. John Goeser, Animal Nutrition Lead for Rock River Lab; Consultant for Cows Agree Consulting; and adjunct assistant professor in the UW–Madison Department of Animal & Dairy Sciences. Dr. Goeser reflects on the corn silage growing season to this point and offers late season and harvest management options.
The August 14 Badger Crop Connect webinar featured Scott Newell, alfalfa outreach specialist with the UW–Madison Division of Extension. This year (2024) has been very challenging to manage alfalfa with rain throwing many cutting schedules off the rails, leaving producers with lower quality forage than expected and trying to catch up with higher quality harvests. Scott Newell discusses the potential implications of this and the importance of managing for persistence in alfalfa to maximize overall productivity.
As we head toward the end of summer, we are closing in on time for a late summer alfalfa establishment. Commonly in Wisconsin, this is done following a wheat crop in the spring. This can lead to a few challenges to consider: residual herbicide carryover and the effects of volunteer wheat on successful establishment.
DON (deoxynivalenol or vomitoxin) is a mycotoxin produced by the fungus responsible for Fusarium Head Blight (FHB), a common and economically important disease in small grains. DON is a problem because it is toxic to humans and animals. Grain grown on-farm and fed to livestock should be managed properly to avoid negative effects.
The July 10 Badger Crop Connect webinar featured Jose Franco, a research agronomist with the U.S. Dairy Forage Research Center (USDA). Jose summarized current research efforts at the U.S. Dairy Forage Research Center on cover crops and continuous living cover. Ongoing research includes cover crop breeding efforts, work on alternatives to winter cereal rye following corn silage and some of the benefits of including flowering cover crops, and a whole systems approach to dairy forage systems evaluations.
