Feed quality and nutrition

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 Jon Rasmussen, Vita Plus dairy technology specialist
When it comes to dairy cow diets today, we mostly discuss higher corn silage or byproduct diets and not high-haylage diets.  One of the reasons for this shift has been challenges with variation in haylage quality.  Minimizing this variation is key if you are considering additional haylage in a diet or looking to take full advantage of all the knowledge gained in balancing diets for amino acids, fiber digestibility, and starch utilization.

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 Jon Urness, Vita Plus national forage specialist
We’re picking up a lot of dirt with harvest equipment, which is reflected in forage ash content, according to Dr. Dan Undersander, University of Wisconsin-Madison.  The result of high ash content can mean a loss of up to 350 pounds in milk per ton of hay forage dry matter (DM).

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. 

By Dr. Michelle Windle, Vita Plus forage products and dairy technical services specialist

Question:  I cut alfalfa almost one week ago but, due to rainy weather, I can only just now get out in the field to chop it.  How can I salvage this crop? 

Answer:  In many areas across the Midwest, alfalfa is ready to be harvested, but this last week brought a lot of rain and next week looks like more of the same.  Alfalfa is already prone to a higher pH than corn silage due to the presence of minerals and proteins that resist a pH drop.

By Jon Urness, Vita Plus national forage specialist
Have you ever looked at your alfalfa hay or haylage and wondered, “What is the value of the leaves and stems?”  Probably not, but the nerds among us might find the answer to that at least interesting.  More importantly, the forage, dairy and beef producers among us may find such information critical to the success of their forage programs.

By Brittany Gevelinger, Vita Plus Dodgeville dairy specialist
In this final video of our five-part series, Brittany Gevelinger walks through the proper steps of sampling bunkers and piles to help you make management and nutrition decisions.

Harvest season can seem like a sprint from one field to another.  However, taking the time to do the basics correctly when harvesting haylage will help keep custom harvesters and dairy producers in business, according to Dr. Michelle Windle, Vita Plus forage products and dairy technical service specialist.

In the last 80 years, milk production and the dairy industry have experienced considerable advancements.  To keep up with this progress, Dr. Dan Undersander, University of Wisconsin-Extension, said we will need to continue to innovate and use technology to provide the highest quality alfalfa possible.

Baleage may not get a lot of attention here in the United States, but it accounts for 10 to 25 percent of all silage in western Europe, according to Dr. Thomas Chamberlain.  During his presentation at the Vita Plus Custom Harvester Meeting, Chamberlain, a private forage and dairy health consultant, explained the advantages of baleage for British producers and how some of those advantages may also apply to U.S. producers.

By Richard Mensendike, Vita Plus dairy specialist
In this fourth video of a five-part series, Richard Mensendike, Vita Plus Lanark livestock specialist, walks through the proper steps of sampling upright silos to help you make management and nutrition decisions.  We’ll discuss sampling strategies for other storage structures and feed in upcoming editions of Forage Foundations.

By Jon Urness, Vita Plus national forage specialist
When Shredlage^® was introduced in 2008, it caused quite a stir among dairy producers, nutritionists, custom chopper operators, equipment manufacturers and university researchers.