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Forage harvest going well for SW Wisconsin farmer

A southwestern Wisconsin dairy farmer has been busy bagging forage.

Mike Yager raises crops to feed his 275 Holsteins near Mineral Point, in Iowa County.  He tells Brownfield, “We got our triticale chopped on Sunday and then we done about 120 acres of second-crop on Monday.”

Yager says three and a half inches of rain Monday slowed hay cutting, but he’s getting plenty of tonnage with chest-high triticale and his second-crop alfalfa was waist-high. “We filled a 12 x 300 bag, an actual 300 foot of forage, off of seventy acres. I’m getting around nine to ten ton per acre.”

Yager says it’s always better when weather forces him to wait on harvesting a crop than to wonder if weather will let him make a crop, and buying feed in tough years is expensive.