Seeing green

BELLECHESTER, Minn. – When the Hunekes harvested 57 bushels per acre of soybeans in 2022, their harvest was 15% more than the year’s U.S. Department of Agriculture national average.
But, above average soybeans were not all they were harvesting.
The Hunekes also harvested 230 bales of winter rye baleage off of those same 50 acres. With numbers like these, the Hunekes see their double cropping efforts as successful.
The Hunekes – Paul, Marc and Micah – have 285 cows and farm approximately 1,000 acres across several properties within a 6-mile radius of the home dairy farm near Bellechester.
The Hunekes have been using cover crops or practicing double cropping for approximately 10 years. Marc said it began as a way to prevent soil erosion on corn silage ground in the fall. This year, between hay ground, cover crops and double cropping, 100% of their 240-acre dairy farm has a green plant cover.
Double crops are similar to cover crops except that double crops are meant to be harvested while cover crops are usually terminated.
The Hunekes have found several keys to their double cropping success. The first is that they plant their cover crop and double crops early in the fall, generally within a week after chopping corn silage. Currently, Paul said they pay a neighbor to no-till drill the winter rye for the fall planting. This takes care of additional fall labor during the harvest season.
“Our labor for seeding it in the fall is a phone call and paying a bill,” Paul said.
The Hunekes have several cropping combinations: winter rye with soybeans, winter rye with alfalfa and grass mixes, and winter rye with corn silage. Their neighbor who plants the rye in the fall also grows the rye seed, which takes care of the need for ordering seed. If they are planting rye as a cover crop, they will plant at the rate of 50 pounds per acre. If it is planned to be a double crop, they will plant at the rate of 80-100 pounds per acre.
In the spring, the Hunekes harvest their winter rye for forage. Depending on weather, they may opt to terminate and use it as green manure instead. When harvested for forage, the Hunekes either chop it or make it into baleage.
“It is better chopped, but it is difficult to chop,” Paul said.
Paul said ash is an issue, especially if the ground is uneven or was worked in the fall before planting the cover crop. Ash is one of the key items the Hunekes pay attention to in double cropping. Paul said neighbors with mergers have experienced issues with the long rye stems wrapping in the merger belts especially if they are harvesting rye that has headed out. The Hunekes use a rotary rake, which works well with rye, but if the ground is uneven, it can produce high ash content.
When the Hunekes bale the rye for baleage, they narrow their 16-foot swath to 7 feet so it does not have to be raked or merged. This helps with ash content by eliminating the need to rake, but Paul said it can then be hard to wilt down. When they bale the 7-foot swaths, they are left with long stems for feeding. After it is baled, the Hunekes wrap the bales. Depending on the harvest, often the rye will be used for dry cows and heifers.
Paul said they fight a small harvest window for high-quality feed.
“Rye can go from milk cow feed – really good, high digestibility – to beef cow filler in less than about four days or five days,” he said.
The rye varies in feed value because of its fast maturity. Hitting the small harvest windows is one of the keys and challenges to successful double cropping. Paul said once the rye heads are exposed, generally the rye ends up with a relative feed quality of 120 or 130, but if the rye is harvested before the heads are exposed, the feed value will be 180-200. The tonnage also varies according to maturity.
Marc said when it comes to feed value, the time window is tight.
“It’s the difference of a day and a half,” he said.
Although they often feed rye to dry cows and heifers, Paul said they do sometimes feed rye to milk cows too.
“When the feed quality is there, it definitely makes milk out of it as good as any other haylage,” Paul said.
Paul said as rye continues to mature, it can produce tremendous volume but the quality falters.
“Where you really kick yourself is if you let it get totally headed out,” Paul said. “All of a sudden you have ... over 2 ton of dry matter to the acre of just a hellacious amount of feed, but ... it should be fed to beef cows.”
One way Paul said they can improve the quality of their rye in the future is by putting on more nitrogen to increase the protein content.
When the Hunekes choose to terminate the crop versus harvesting, they begin by injecting liquid manure followed by discing. After the ground has been disced, they plant it. Finally, once the new crop is established, they will spray the rye to complete the termination process.
This past spring, the Hunekes had an unexpected challenge in their cover cropping system. Their corn was growing into the decimated rye, which was regrowing and was ready to spray. Unbeknownst to them, however, army worms were feasting on the rye. When the Hunekes sprayed, the army worms transferred to the corn and completely ate away the corn on 30 acres.
“The rest was just like somebody came in overnight and took it,” Paul said.
The Hunekes plan to keep insect pressure in mind in the future.
Marc said that from a bottom-line standpoint, the Hunekes are content with the cover crops and double cropping.
“Without actually doing any numbers, it feels more profitable if you get a bunch of forage off,” Marc said. “It feels less profitable if you’re terminating it all. Still, in the long run, I think there’s enough advantages to make it worthwhile.”
Marc said their spray costs have held steady compared to single cropping, and they see fewer broadleaves because the rye chokes them out. Their fertilizer costs have gone down slightly. Paul said any yield loss on the second crop seems to be made up by the tonnage of rye that comes off first.
The Hunekes were part of a research study with the University of Minnesota that looked at cover crops and their ability to hold nitrogen. As part of the study, they injected liquid manure into established cover crops in early November. In the spring, the areas planted with cover crops retained the nitrogen better than the ground that did not have cover crops. The Hunekes said the rye recovered so well that it was difficult to see in the spring that they had injected liquid manure into the crop in the fall.
The Hunekes understand the environmental value of cover crops and double cropping for their farm.
“After you till in the spring and plant and you get a heavy downpour, you don’t get so nervous because it still is green out there until the corn is kind of established,” Paul said. “So, it just kind of holds the soil together even if you get some heavy downpours.”
In the fall, rye contains soil runoff as well. The Hunekes have also changed their tillage habits as a result of double cropping.
“I don’t think we do near as much deep tillage,” Paul said. “Because (of) the grasses and the alfalfa and the cover crops, I think that root mass rotting just loosens the ground a lot.”
The Hunekes said producers considering or practicing double cropping need to be flexible and able to pivot. Although their double cropping success is dependent on weather and time availability, they said it has been a good fit.
“That whole process of keeping something growing on the ground I think has done our farm good,” Paul said.