[Ray 54]

Way to many variables to know what all causes taste and smell in the hay. But if the critters eat it good most of the time, you must be doing the right things mostly.

Again since our moisture is mostly all in winter and things start drying real fast as grass heads in late spring, its different here than most places. But a heat wave that burns the leaves up as the seeds suck up the last of the moisture to mature always made a stubble/straw cattle really would clean up after combining. Most times oats, wheat, or barley cut late by other areas standards makes hay most livestock clean up well here. But I have seen fields where most livestock don't want it when you think it should be like our "normal" stuff. Never had any one thing that could be pointed out as the cause just 1 in a 100 kind of thing.

Fertilizer is used on 95% of everything planted in my time, but old timers always said it was even more helpful in a dry year than a normal year. But they where thinking in grain quality as in pounds per bushel and tonnage rather than hay tonnage and feeding quality. With the dry coming at seed filling we can get a lot of hull verses a well filled seed in a bad year.