Describe your farm and facilities. We farm 270 acres, do some custom harvesting, milk 85 cows in a tiestall barn and have 110 heifers and 50 steers in monoslope buildings.
What forages do you harvest? Corn and alfalfa.
How many acres of crops do you raise? We have 110 acres of corn and 160 acres of alfalfa.
Describe the rations for your livestock. The cows get a total mixed ration of corn silage, earlage, haylage, a protein mix, straw and dry hay. Our heifers over 500 pounds get primarily haylage, mineral and a few pounds of corn silage. The steers get earlage, a finisher pellet and cow refusals.
What quality and quantity do you harvest of each crop? We chop around 900 tons of haylage at 170-190 relative forage quality, 1,100 tons of corn silage and 450 tons of earlage. We big square bale around 100 tons of dairy-quality alfalfa.
Describe your harvesting techniques for alfalfa and corn silage. We start cutting first-cutting alfalfa at half bud to full bud and harvest every cutting around 28 days later. For corn silage, we shoot for around 65% moisture.
What techniques do you use to store, manage and feed your forages? We use silos, bags and piles. Normally, I bag my first cutting of hay. Second cutting, I fill the silo, and third cutting, I refill the silo. I dry bale the third or fourth crop if the weather allows it. The corn silage just goes in the silo or the bag. We have 16-by-70 for earlage, 18-by-70 for haylage and 20-by-70 for corn silage.
How does quality forages play in the production goals for your herd? Just about one of the most important ones. It’s hard and expensive to get cows to milk on poor-quality feed. Your purchased feed costs go up when you have poor-quality feed.
What management or harvesting techniques have you changed that have made a notable difference in forage quality? Switching to low-lignin alfalfa. When we used to have conventional alfalfa, I would have to be at a 24-day harvest interval to hit a 170 relative feed value. Now, I can push it out to 30 days and get the same result and more tonnage.
Describe a challenge you overcame in reaching your forage quality goals. Getting used to merging alfalfa in front of the chopper and still hitting where we wanted to be in terms of moisture, without getting too dry. I put five wind rows together, and they normally start merging a couple of hours before I start. I have to be precise when they start and when I start so the hay does not get too dry.
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