Forage Foundations

By Pat Hoffman, Vita Plus dairy technical specialist
This past summer at Vita Plus, we evaluated a new ration formulation sub-model that accounts for the rumen unsaturated fatty acid load (RUFAL) in the ration. Research has demonstrated that feeding dairy cows excessive levels of RUFALs has a negative effect on milk fat test. In fact, in our summer project, more than 50 percent of the variance in milk fat percent across herds could be explained by accessible RUFAL concentrations in the diet.

By Bryan Knoper, Vita Plus dairy specialist
Do you know the value of your stored forages?

At the farm level, it is worth more than the cost to build another freestall barn. At the cow level, it is realized in the fluctuation of her milk production when you switch forages.

By Jon Urness, Vita Plus national forage specialist
Several times a year, a member of the Vita Plus forage team gets a call that starts like this: “I’ve got a chance to buy some haylage from a neighbor, what should I pay for it?”

With wide variation in quality, moisture, and point of delivery, the answer can be a little daunting as it depends on a number of objective and subjective factors. Let’s tackle the objective ones first because they’re fairly easy.

By Peter Coyne, Vita Plus dairy service specialist

Ben Franklin said it well.

Having a well-planned corn silage harvest is essential if we want to maximize forage quality for the herd in the next year. On a good day, custom operators chop about 100 acres of corn silage with one chopper. For a 1,000-cow dairy, each day of chopping results in about a month’s worth of corn silage for the milking herd.

By Pat Hoffman, Vita Plus dairy technical specialist
In some ways, it seems like an unusual concept to write about feeding lactating dairy cows grass forages, but it shouldn’t since they were born to eat grass. Furthermore, around the world, pasture grasses, grass hay and grass silage are the predominant forages fed to dairy cows.

But here in the upper Midwest, our forages of choice since the 1940s have been alfalfa and corn silage. While feeding more cereal grasses, such as triticale, rye or oat silage, seems new to us, it’s certainly nothing new to a dairy cow.

By Dr. Michelle Windle, Vita Plus forage products and dairy technical services specialist
Many factors may influence a producer’s decision to grow grass silage, such as a need for somewhere to put manure, a land topography that requires a cover crop, or a limited forage inventory that could use some quality feed to stretch it. Grass silage can offer many advantages to both the animal and the producer.

Editor’s note: This article is geared toward systems manufactured by Dohrmann Enterprises, Inc. , including the DE-100, DE-55, DE-45, DE-25, or DE-9, DE-8, DE-7 and DE-6.

By Dwain Ewald, Vita Plus Gagetown customer service
Whether it’s a pressure pump applicator on the bailer or at the silo blower, cleanliness is one of the first things I always check before use. You don’t want to go through all the steps of cleaning and calibrating the system to find out the tips and filters are plugged with sediment and debris still in the tank.