Having been in the works for a while, we are excited to announce the 2025 Hay Testing Raffle. For every hay or forage (including silage!) sample that is grown in Watauga County and submitted to the NC Agronomic Lab for analysis between June 1st and October 15th, you will be entered in the raffle. The top prize as of now is a $100 gift certificate to Blue Ridge Tractor (can be used on any merchandise or parts) and we hope to announce more prizes soon.  Our office does not automatically receive notifications when you send samples to the lab. In order to enter, you must email (kendra_phipps@ncsu.edu), drop off, or mail your sample analysis report to our office once you receive it. 

For more information on submitting samples, please visit Farmer Forage Testing

If you have never tested your hay, now is a great time to do it. Testing hay or silage provides crucial information for ensuring your livestock's nutrient requirements are being met, and can also help you plan ahead for winter supplementation. Each sample is $10 to submit, not including shipping, but provides invaluable information. Our office has a hay probe that can be checked out for gathering your samples. To use the hay probe, you will need a drill and gallon size Ziploc bag. Not sure how to actually go about sampling? Check out

or call our office.

We recommend submitting one sample for every field. For example, if you harvested 20 bales off of field 1, you would use the hay probe to randomly collect 10 or 15 cores from a variety of those bales, mix them together in a ziploc bag, and label that bag field 1. This bag constitutes one sample. You would repeat the process for every field, and ideally sample each cutting. So, if you have three hayfields and take two cuttings from each one, you ideally would have submitted six samples by the end of hay season (and have six entries in this raffle, if you get the reports to our office).