Tight harvest windows ensure forage consistency, quality

Describe your farm and facilities. We’re a family operated dairy with a freestall and parlor arrangement. We have a double-8 herringbone parlor that we’ve been milking in for almost 30 years.

What forages do you harvest? We harvest primarily corn silage and HarvXtra dry alfalfa. We harvest some cover crop oats for heifer forage and some cover crop

How many acres of crops do you raise? We raise about 1,400 acres.

Describe the rations for your livestock. An important concept for our ration is that the cows are fed about 82% homegrown feed. It is a high-forage ration, and we feed haylage, corn silage, ground corn and a protein mix.

What quality and quantity do you harvest of each crop? We harvest about 350 acres of alfalfa and about 450 acres of corn silage. We’ll have about 450-500 acres of dry corn, and 80-100 acres of oats that we harvest for oat forage. For several years we have raised all brown mid-rib corn for corn silage. But at some point, we’re going to have to make a change because it’s been discontinued. There’s some supply left, but it is limited. When raising HarvXtra alfalfa, we think the next step to getting higher quality feed is to get more diligent on weed control.

Describe your harvesting techniques for alfalfa and corn silage. We partner with another dairy family. We work together to pool our resources, both equipment and labor, for harvest. We try to do our alfalfa basically in two and a half to three days. We want to get it harvested when it’s ready and get it done quickly, so we get a really consistent forage. That helps keep our inventory consistent for feeding to the cow. With our partnership, we don’t have a set pattern as to whose hay we do first. We get out there and do it because we know whoever goes first, the next person is going to be close behind. For corn silage, we kind of do the same thing. There, the strategy is that we both raise the same hybrids, but we’ll plant our silage corn first, then get the grain corn planted, then go to the other farm and do grain corn first, and corn silage after that. That way we have a little gap in the maturity for harvest time.

What techniques do you use to store, manage and feed your forages? We store all of our forages in bunkers, and we cover them. We use a silage shield and the black and white plastic and cover them tire-to-tire as soon as we’re finished harvesting. We keep track of loads going in, and our nutritionist measures the bunkers to see if it corresponds with the number of loads. We take inventory as we’re feeding out, so we’re always looking at how long the inventory is going to last and asking ourselves if it is going to make it to the next feeding season.

How does quality forage play in the production goals for your herd? Cows will always respond much better to quality forages. The quality forages are really the backbone of our dairy rations. By having these quality forages, it allows us to feed a higher percentage of forage and to purchase less protein.

What management or harvesting techniques have you changed that have made a notable difference in forage quality? One thing would be the speed of harvesting. We can harvest when it’s ready and get it all harvested so that we have the same quality of forage for the entire crop. The ration is not changing with feeding different qualities of hay week to week. We have a tight harvest window so that our forage is really consistent in its quality level. Another would be switching to forage varieties, whether it’s haylage or corn silage. For haylage it was the low lignin alfalfa with the HarXtra, and for corn silage, it was fiber corn varieties with the BMR. Finally, we are very diligent about weed control, fertilizer management and just trying to do the best job we can.

Describe a challenge you overcame in reaching your forage quality goals. One of the challenges was just having enough acres available to raise the forage that we needed. We overcame that by purchasing land when it became available, keeping a positive relationship with the landlords, and improving yields over time on the crops we raise. For us, you could get the impression that it’s about the number of acres, but it’s really the exact opposite. It’s about getting the most per acre. A dairy farmer always has an inventory of manure, so utilize that inventory to your best possible advantage and be very diligent about what’s happening in your field so that you can always make adjustments or do what needs to be done to help safeguard your crop.