Success StoryHay Contest Revamping a Success



Hay Contest Revamping a Success

Author: Lyndall Harned

Planning Unit: Boyd County CES

Major Program: Forages

Plan of Work: Forages and Crop Management

Outcome: Long-Term Outcome

As in the 25 years past, fall brought about the annual East Kentucky Hay Contest, just on an adjusted timeline. However, this year was  significantly different, at least for us agents and our Forage Specialists contacts. For the forage producers, nothing much changed on their end. First, we are dealing with a new testing lab and a 2nd year forage specialist who coordinates the program. And as with many things, when new people are involved, they bring new ideas and ways of doing things. This year, that involved, after many meetings and hours of work, on the specialists part and my part as the unofficial agent contact for the program, a new process to identify and handle the samples. Last year we submitted just under 600 samples and this year we were again at about the same number, even during this time of COVID restrictions. We are now entering the samples electronically through a database to track them instead of doing it manually. We are also using the Princeton lab to test the samples instead of the KY DOA, and they use a different process which actually returns more in-depth information to the farmers. It looks like this is a system that we will continue with for the upcoming years, as everything seems to have gone off with no issue and a better system is now in place.






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