Harvesting quality silage takes careful planning as weather, chopping height and storage can impact forage nutrients.
MONITOR WEATHER PATTERNS
Above average rainfall during the growing season lowers the fiber digestibility of corn silage, especially around the tasseling stage of the plant. Monitoring weather patterns is key as harvest nears, so alternative feed ingredients can be included in the feeding plan to help rebalance the animal’s diet if corn silage digestibility is low.
SURVEY INVENTORY BEFORE CHOPPING
Chopping height considerations should be determined by first taking inventory.
“For every 6 inches you raise the cutting height, you reduce yield by approximately one ton per acre,” said Joe Lawrence, dairy forage systems specialist and PRO-DAIRY team member at Cornell University. “Fiber digestibility and starch content can both be improved by a higher cutting height.”
In general, starting with a cutting height of 6 to 8 inches, raising the height of cut by about 12 inches to 18-20 total inches, results in the loss of approximately two tons per acres of yield (at 35% dry matter), but will gain five to six percentage points of NDF digestibility. Thus, because less stalk and the same number of kernels is harvested, the percentage of starch in the resulting silage will also increase.
3 TIPS TO HARVESTING QUALITY SILAGE
1. UNDERSTAND INVENTORY NEEDS.
Knowing your available forage and the number of animals you need to feed makes other harvest decisions easier to make.
2. DON’T RUSH.
Waiting when the crop is at proper maturity — typically defined at 35% whole plant dry matter will deliver the best quality silage product. Timely harvested silage yields proper fermentation and reduces spoilage.
3. MAKE STORAGE PLANS.
The better storage is planned, the more flexibility you have to match forage quality to animal needs at feed out.
