Now that hay season has begun, it’s a good time to make plans to pull samples from your best hay for the Ozark Empire Fair Hay Contest, says University of Missouri Extension agronomy specialist Tim Schnakenberg.
Entry deadline is July 17. To enter, contact your county University of Missouri Extension Center. Specialists are available to help pull the core samples from the 10-bale entry.
The hay contest is held in conjunction with the 2026 Ozark Empire Fair, July 30 to Aug. 8, at the fairgrounds in Springfield.
There are new prizes for selected winners in 2026, Schnakenberg says. Sponsors are providing some cash prizes, net wrap, orchardgrass seed, hay tests and gift cards, says Schnakenberg. The grand champion will receive the net wrap and seed. There will also be ribbons and premium dollars for the top six entries in each class, he says.
The contest allows either dry hay or haylage in either small bales or large bale packages, says Schnakenberg. It is best to allow about four weeks before collecting a haylage sample.
Within each division, classes are split into legumes, cool-season grass, warm-season perennial grass, grass-legume mix, and summer/winter annual grass. The educational hay exhibit at the fair features a display of booklets with exhibitor data that includes test results from Custom Laboratory in Monett. There is limited space to exhibit a few of the best hay samples submitted. Past exhibitors credit the show with marketing assistance.
The class placings will be based on relative forage quality (RFQ). In addition to RFQ, data will include moisture, crude protein, acid detergent fiber, neutral detergent fiber, and total digestible nutrients (TDN). The forage must have been harvested in Missouri in 2026. Exhibitors are limited to two entries per class and no more than one entry per field per cutting.
Source : missouri.edu