John Fike, forage extension specialist at Virginia Tech, contacted me during the winter of 2017 about helping with their annual county agent training in June 2017.  He had seen me present on the tradeoff between hay feeding and stocking rate at the American Forage and Grassland Council annual meeting in January 2017.  I ended up presenting on this and two other topics (fixed costs of haymaking, and pasture-finished beef production) at the agent training.  Overall, the training went extremely well.  There were eight presentations over the two days of training, where I had three of them.  Here an email John Fike sent on 6/15/17 after the training to Virginia Tech’s Associate Director, ANR Extension Programs, Robert “Bobby” Grisso: 

“Dear Bobby,

I want to thank you for supporting Greg Halich’s participation with the VCE Agent In-Service last week. Dr. Halich did a great job of integrating and addressing critical issues pertaining to forage-livestock production profitability. Specifically, hay (whether grown on farm or purchased) and hay feeding costs are critical considerations for the forage-livestock operation and these inputs affect the potential stocking rate of a farm. Understanding the interactions of hay costs and stocking rates should be the basis for producer decisions about how much hay to purchase and feed (and how many days to graze), and in consequence, how many animals to carry on a farm. 

Growing interest in these issues by agents and their clientele is evident in efforts to develop “Graze 300 VA”, a branded educational program that agents have started in the state to support better grazing management and lower feeding costs. Greg’s presentations were timely, insightful, and well-aligned with the efforts of agents and specialists working to help producers with these issues. The fact that he speaks from first hand experience of forage system management made his talks even more approachable for the agents in attendance. 

As Virginia Tech and CALS move forward, I hope that getting faculty with this kind of economic assistance and leadership will be a priority as it would be of great benefit to our agents and producers. In fact, when I asked one agent for a comment about the program, she simply said, “Can we hire him?” It is important that VCE have professionals on hand who can address these kinds of issues, and the agent’s question speaks volumes – both about the quality of Dr. Halich’s presentations but also about the hunger felt out in the field for this kind of information.

Again, many thanks for your support for his participation.”

John Fike

I believe this email shows the magnitude of the impact that my presentations had with the ANR agents in Virginia, and hopefully their subsequent use of the information throughout that state.  John Fike and I have since been in contact discussing the possibility of working on joint extension publications that will benefit both states (e.g. Hay Feeding vs. Stocking Rate Tradeoff).  Hopefully this will the start of a mutually beneficial relationship between the University of Kentucky and Virginia Tech’s extension programs related to forages and grazing management.