Federated is proud to share the success of Osceola, WI, farmers Donald and Nancy Hasselquist, who this month took home the grand prize for alfalfa production in a contest sponsored by Winfield United, the crop inputs and insights business of Land O'Lakes, Inc. Craig Loen, Federated agronomist at the Osceola location, often works with the Hasselquists.

The Hasselquists' accomplishment was announced in the following Winfield news release.

Donald and Nancy Hasselquist of Osceola, Wisconsin, farm 160 acres and raise dairy replacement heifers. Their goal is to meet most of the growing heifers' needs with a high-quality alfalfa hay while balancing the ration to keep grain energy content at a minimum.

The couple sent a sample of  their 2016 seeded CROPLAN® brand HarvXtra® Alfalfa to the World Forage Analysis Superbowl and won the grand champion title. A good portion of the Hasselquists' acres are on highly erodible soils (HEL), making alfalfa a smart option. The Hasselquists plan to rotate these HEL acres to HarvXtra® Alfalfa and keep it in rotation longer, whereas their flat acres of alfalfa are aggressively cut. The two work closely with their agronomist, Craig Loen, at Federated Co-ops in Osceola.

The contest is based 70 percent on forage quality analysis and 30 percent on the judge's score, providing an overall ranking score. There were 15 top notch entries in the Dairy Hay division and over 1,000 total entries in this year's contest, which is twice as many as last year.

Dairyland Labs conducted the contest sample analysis. Below are the Hasselquists' results from their sample of CROPLAN® brand HarvXtra® alfalfa.

• %DM: 85.21
• %CP: 25.98
• %NDF: 26.42
• 30HR IV NDFD: 55.36
• RFQ: 281
• Milk per ton: 3,680