Early Season Alfalfa: First Cutting Care

Early Season Alfalfa: First Cutting Care

Your first alfalfa cutting offers the most opportunity for a successful growing season. Early treatment and care for your field is the easiest way to boost the quality and quantity of your crop with each harvest. With factors such as palatability, mineral composition, digestibility, growing great alfalfa is an important consideration for farmers everywhere. Not to mention that an improved alfalfa harvest accounts for costs that can represent up to 50% of the total costs of producing milk.

Two Key Considerations of Production Stand Out:

  1. Including Minerals, Carbon, and Biology in every fertility pass you make
  2. Applying inputs at critical growth stages

The first is easy to understand: a good fertility mix is a 3-legged stool of Minerals, Carbon and Biology. 

For the second, all plants have critically important growth stages. Helping the plant move through these key stress points positively effects yield and nutrient density. For an established alfalfa crop, this stress point is right after cutting. 

What's Our Recommendation?
3-5 gallons CX-1 with equal parts of liquid carbon soon after cutting.
 (The best ROI is after 1st and 2nd cuttings; if trying to establish a new alfalfa crop make this pass earlier, at green-up)

 What you will accomplish:  The first goal is to “heal the wound” cutting has inflicted; the second is to get the plant back into high production as soon as possible.  Carbon, minerals, and biology help translocate minerals within the plant. This is where you will see solid stems full of sugars, starches and energy for milk production and herd health, versus hollow stems that contain more indigestible fiber. 

An early application of CX-1 after your first alfalfa cutting is an easy way to improve your crop quality, boost yield, and improve overall Return on Investment.

For more information on CX-1 and how to make the most of your Spring season, contact one of our expert sales representatives