NW Illinois Stephenson county | When I used to grow alfalfa, a stand would last 5-7 years if needed. Usually the ends would start getting thin from traffic especially when some of the harvests were during wetter weather. I fertilized every year including Sulfur and Boron. I found depending on the year you are actually fertilizing for the next year. If I skipped a year due to shortage of funds, no matter what or how much fertilizer I put on the next year yields suffered. I never understood why some neighbors would say they had plenty of hay so they would not fertilize it because for me it hurt the next year's yield. I would continue to fertilize my hay and not seed down more hay or plow up some hay and put it to corn instead. Some times I would sell a crop from a field on shares to get some small squares for my young stock (dairy farm) and the buyer said his share was more then he thought the whole field would yield. Another time they had their share big square baled and the baler guy said the yield was twice what most of his customer's were getting. A big boast in yield and quality came when I started using Bio-cal and fertilizer with a more complete list of micro-nutrients form Midwestern BioAg. Free choice mineral usage for the dairy cows dropped 2/3s. Animals are able to utilize minerals more from plants than from added minerals. Bottom line is alfalfa needs to be fed and responds with yield, quality, and persistence.
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Fertilizing hay land?
