Perennial forages include a diverse range of grasses and legumes that are utilized by livestock producers for a wide variety of purposes – from hay and greenfeed to summer pasture and winter grazing through stockpiled forage. They make up on the of largest sources of livestock feed on the prairies and the wide diversity in growth characteristics makes them ideal for many purposes.

According the Alberta Agriculture’s Agriprofits Benchmaks, two thirds the cost of maintaining a cow comprising pasture, stored feed and bedding. Consequently, managing the perennial forage supply and having access to high quality and high yielding forage varieties is extremely important to producers.  

Historically there has been a gap in perennial forage production knowledge in Alberta and, in particular, regionally specific variety information. There is significant variation in Alberta’s ecoregions and varieties that developed and tested in one location or region will likely not perform the same in another region such as those experienced in Northeastern Alberta.

To help bridge this gap in perennial forage information, the perennial forage trial was developed to test cultivars that have been recently developed but have had limited regional evaluation to provide producers with valuable, region specific data. The province wide project data will be available to all producers in Alberta.

To read the report for 2016, Click Here.

The results are in for 2017! To read the report, Click Here.

To read more about Perennial Forages, Click Here.