Been thinking about trying a cereal grain hay probably beardless barley - Haybet - and was just hopping around here and the internet and came across some pics of productivity and also what milk stage barley looks like for those who might be wondering about when to cut etc. Just scroll down the presentation unless you're interested in some of the nutritional aspects of feeding to cows.

http://animalrange.montana.edu/documents/extension/nutrconf2011.pdf

Barley grain has become interesting to me for sprouting and feeding in dairy rations, too.

Thank you, Geoff.

My neighbor has been using the Haybet beardless barley for several years. If you let it get ripe it rapidly loses palitability. Cut young like as shown it seems to be a way to get some high tonnage per acre. He uses it as a rotation crop with his alfalfa. He will feed his cattle on the 20 acres for a winter then plow it all under and plant haybet. 3 years of that and back into alfalfa. 300 head wintering on 20 acres makes for some manure into the ground. Seems to work well for him. I use oats much the same way.

In Montana and parts of the Dakotas, oats and barley are used as a nurse crop for establishing an alfalfa stand. The barley is planted along with the alfalfa in the spring, and then cut as hay at the proper stage for the barley. It helps provide some cover for the young alfalfa, and provides a decent hay crop for the producer.
Barley or oat hay can also be part of a regular rotation of crops. When the weather hasn't been good for a grain crop of oats or barley, it will sometimes be put up for hay, though there are some risks, mainly nitrate poisoning.

When a few folks were growing it locally, we found it to be a great feed.