Forage Profile: Steve and Lori Dockendorf

Describe your farm and facilities. We milk cows with two Lely milking robots and feed the calves with two Lely calf feeders. We raise all our own youngstock and finish our own steers. We built the robot barn in 2011 and prior to that we milked in a tiestall barn.

What forages do you harvest? We harvest silage, haylage, triticale and peas. We feed the triticale and peas to the heifers and do corn and soybeans as cash crops. We always get four cuttings of hay each year; on occasion we will get five. We chop pretty much everything. The bulk of our ration is haylage so we need to get a lot of it.

How many acres of crops do you raise? We farm 985 acres.

Describe the rations for your livestock. The milk cows get a 50/50 ration of haylage and silage. The youngstock get a ration of haylage and silage and the steers get haylage and high moisture corn. It is little bit cheaper ration and that way we can feed more of our own protein.

What quality and quantity do you harvest of each crop? Our goal is to get 185 relative feed value or better. Anything under 160 RFV milk production goes down and the cows aren’t as healthy.

Describe your harvesting techniques for alfalfa and corn silage. Alfalfa is cut in 28–30-day intervals and harvested at approximately 50%-60% moisture for the Harvestores and bags. Silage is harvested at 60%-65% moisture for the stave silos and bags with the use of a kernel processor.

What techniques do you use to store, manage and feed your forages? Haylage is stored in Harvestores and bags. Silage is stored in the stave silos and bags.

How does quality forages play in the production goals for your herd? It is our top priority to get high quality forages in order to reach high production and healthy animals. You just can’t achieve top-quality cows without having top-quality forage, especially when you feed a high haylage ration like we do.

What are management or harvesting techniques you have changed that has made a notable difference in forage quality? We haven’t really changed anything since we started farming. Using Harvestores, stave silos and bags have been working really good for us.

Describe a challenge you overcame in reaching your forage quality goals. We have had some years that we were so rainy that we couldn’t get into the field to get the dry hay made in time so we had to make balage. This is not ideal for us but is our backup plan when the weather does not cooperate. We would much prefer to get haylage or dry hay and so we only make balage when we have to. That’s just what works best for us. There have been times when I was cutting first crop and the windshield was getting wet, but we make it work the best we can.