What Goes Into the Process of Hay Testing

By: Successful Farming Staff

q

Why is it important to test hay?

a

It’s important to know the nutrient content of the hay. That way you can feed it properly to the different animals, know whether you need to add any supplementation & know how much you can feed. It’s kind of like having a nutrition label on human food that you buy at the store. So it’s like having the nutrition label.

q

What is it being tested for exactly?

a

Mainly the amount of protein that’s in the feed, in the hay. Also the energy content. The protein we call crude protean, because it’s really a measure of the amount of nitrogen that’s in the sample. They convert that to protein, cause we know that protein is about 16% nitrogen, so if you multiple the nitrogen by 6.25, you come up with the crude protein content. The second thing you want to know the is energy & energy in human & some animals, you use calories to know the amount of energy, in livestock we use total digestible nutrients because all the nutrients can give off energy. So we sum all those up & get a total.