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Armyworms are impacting hay production but extent of damage unknown until spring

The fall armyworm invasion across much the Corn Belt has reduced hay production but an extension specialist says the pest’s full impact won’t be known until next spring.

Ben Beckman is with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “But if we really hit some cooler temperatures pretty quickly here, that’s going to put that alfalfa in a little bit of a deficit going into winter.  We might see a little more winter kill and winter injury on our stands and that’s going to affect and decrease production next year.”

In the latest USDA supply, demand and production report, the agency is projecting a year-to-year decline in hay production due to slight decreases in planted area and average yield.

Beckman tells Brownfield producers faced a unique challenge with the timing of the last cutting. “If anyone wanted to take a later cutting, they came late enough we were right on that verge of the last cutting so we might have missed out on the last cutting if we had an infestation in a field where somebody didn’t get the final cutting of hay off.”

He says the armyworm infestation has exacerbated hay availability challenges in certain areas that have experienced drought. “From a lot of guys’ standpoints, when it hit a brome field or something like that where you had new growth and you were hoping to put cattle out because we’ve utilized everything else over the course of the summer and we had dry conditions and didn’t have any extra pasture and a lot of folks were counting on new growth and all of a sudden that’s gone and now I have to start feeding hay earlier.”

Beckman says production would also have affected grass hay and most pasture land.  

Ben Beckman: