Forage harvesting

By Jerry Ruetten, Vita Plus Dodgeville dairy nutritionist In southwest Wisconsin, despite a lack of rain in August, soybean and corn grain production were about average to a little above average.  This fall, corn silage ran about 25 tons per acre and starch has varied between 25 and 42 percent, with the average being in

   Click to download presentation In its third year, the U.S. Custom Harvester Chopper Challenge continues to pit self-propelled harvesters against one another in the same field. For the 2012 challenge, five choppers cut down a 1/4-mile field length. The corn was planted in 38-inch rows; the choppers made two rounds and covered about

  Click to download presentation Riverview LLP, headquartered in Minnesota, milks 45,000 cows at seven different sites. Putting up forage at this scale requires a well-oiled machine. Andy Hacker oversees trucking, commodities and forage harvesting for Riverview. During his presentation at the Vita Plus Custom Harvester Meeting, he said it all begins with core values.

  Click to download presentation John Brantsen, a Vita Plus dairy nutritionist, remembers the 2011 harvest season well.  In his area of northwest Iowa, the late summer and fall brought high temperatures and a lot of wind.  He said harvesters in the area were racing the weather, trying to get corn silage harvested before it

  Click to download presentation Custom harvesters know that a high corn silage processing score (CSPS) is a top goal for dairy producers as they’re looking to get the most energy value out of today’s expensive feeds.  The catch is that estimating CSPS in the field is not an easy or consistent task. Dr. Brian

   Photo: (left to right) Bruce Dankers, Dankers Enterprises, Inc., Chuck Fahey, Prairieland Dairy, LLC, and Aaron Kutz, Kutz Dairy, LLC Harvesting corn as Shredlage™ is so new that there hasn’t been time for a lot of research to be conducted. Dr. Randy Shaver, with the University of Wisconsin–Madison, has done a few trials,

  Click to download presentation Roger Olson of Shredlage, LLC has extensive experience in nutrition consulting with dairy herds.  According to Olson, anytime something was going wrong with a farm’s nutrition program, he observed “cigarette butts” in the manure.  That is, he noticed the round, blunt chunks associated with conventional corn silage. A few years

   Click to download presentation Dairy producers have expressed interest in feeding corn as Shredlage™. At the University of Wisconsin – Madison, Dr. Randy Shaver has been conducting feeding trials to see what makes it tick inside the cow. He shared his results with those looking to put up feed for dairies at the

There are four types of dry matter loss – fermentation loss, loss from leaching, surface spoilage loss and feedout loss. Dr. Ken Griswold, Penn State Cooperative Extension, conducted a study to measure losses from fermentation and leaching, with an objective to refine the relationship between density and loss. Griswold worked with four relatively small bunker

Dr. Matthew Digman with the U.S. Dairy Forage Research Center and Jason Schiebout with Scherer Corrugating & Machine, Inc. led an open discussion on chopper adjustments and particle size in harvesting corn silage. “There is a lot of debate about proper length of cut and roll gap and how the two interact,” Digman said. The

Snaplage is becoming a popular alternative to high moisture corn in some portions of the U.S. Dr. Matthew Digman at the U.S. Dairy Forage Research Center has been working field and feeding trials to learn more about this potential feedstuff. High moisture corn feeds well and can be kept in low-cost anaerobic storage. However, its

In his role as a nutritionist for Vita Plus, Dr. John Goeser developed a report card as a means to track his performance for each dairy operation he services. This report card helps him show those dairies how well he is working for them. Goeser adapted his report card to the forage industry to help