Forage Profile: Steven Broersma of Tri-Cross Dairy

Describe your farm and facilities. We have a cross-ventilated freestall barn with a 100-stall rotary.

What forages do you harvest? Alfalfa haylage and corn silage.

How many acres of crops do you raise? We buy almost all our forages from our neighbors. Typically we put up 4,000 acres of corn silage and 1,400 acres of haylage.

Describe the rations for your livestock. Our rations are about 40% silage and 10% haylage and dry hay on a dry matter basis. The rest is an on-farm premix of ground corn, cottonseed and proteins.

What quality and quantity do you harvest of each crop? We try to do between 80,000-100,000 tons of corn silage most years. For haylage, we put up about 10,000 tons. The hay quality varies a lot depending on weather conditions. The protein is usually 23%-24%, and the relative feed value has averaged as high as 200 and as low as 130.

Describe your harvesting techniques for alfalfa and corn silage.  For alfalfa, we use four self-propelled windrowers followed by two mergers to merge five rows together. We usually have it chopped and packed 24-30 hours after windrowing. For corn silage, we have been using three John Deere 9900i choppers to get the work done. We start chopping at 68% moisture and have been able to get an average of 65% in the last few years.

What techniques do you use to store, manage and feed your forages. All our forages are stored in drive-over piles. They are faced daily with a loader and a silage rake. We use EZfeed software to manage inventories and rations.

How does quality forages play in the production goals for your herd? Quality forage is a key part of our production. While we can’t always control the test quality, we do our best to make sure it is put up at the correct moisture with adequate packing. As long as we do these things right and get proper fermentation, we end up with a good product that is easy to feed in the ration.

What are management or harvesting techniques you have changed that has made a notable difference in forage quality? In the past, while we were chopping alfalfa,
we would end up with different styles of windrowers in three or four fields at the same time. This made it difficult to follow with the chopper and keep consistent moisture. The farmers that we work with are now running 3-4 of the same style machines and they all run together. This has made it much easier to get consistent moisture and a better pile of haylage.

Describe a challenge you overcame in reaching your forage quality goals. One challenge we had with corn silage was that we had limited space for the pile, so we started making the piles pretty tall, and we would build the new pile up against the face of the old pile. When we hit the transition from old to new silage, the pile would start to crack and slough down. To correct this, we started driving the pack tractors straight forward and backward while pushing. When we eliminated the horseshoe pattern and turning on the pile, our tall piles held together much better. This has helped us keep the face much fresher, and we have had fewer mold and yeast issues in the silage.