Forage Foundations

By John Brantsen, Vita Plus dairy specialist
The Fourth of July has come and gone, corn has started to tassel, and we are officially in the heart of summer. This means the always-exciting corn silage season in the Midwest is less than two months away!  Although this is a great time for producers to slow down, and maybe take a vacation while the corn crop continues its march toward maturity, you should not forget to properly prepare the equipment for harvest and storage of this year’s corn silage.

A dumpster on a dairy farm wouldn’t normally turn heads, but a new type of dumpster is doing that very thing.

This dumpster’s sole purpose is to recycle used ag and silage plastics. Revolution Plastics, headquartered in Stuttgard, Arkansas, offers producers an environmentally friendly option to dispose of the plastics on their farms.

Mark Case is a Vita Plus dairy specialist in western Michigan and Dwain Ewald is a customer service specialist with Vita Plus Gagetown. Case and Ewald work closely with producers to troubleshoot and maintain their inoculant applicators and also support their other forage needs.

By Jon Urness, Vita Plus national forage specialist
Wildlife pests found around bunkers, piles and bags are not only an unsightly nuisance, but can also wreak havoc by spreading serious disease threats to livestock and even humans.

By Dr. Darin Bremmer, Vita Plus dairy technical specialist
What once was considered a high corn silage diet is not high compared to today’s standards. In the past, you never heard of feeding milk cow diets containing more than 50 percent of forage dry matter (DM) from corn silage.  We now feed diets with more than 80 percent of forage DM from corn silage.

By Jon Urness, Vita Plus national forage specialist
What’s the number one reason for things going bad in the silage bunker, pile, bag or silo?

The answer to that question is often determined long before even a single load is put into those structures.

For the most part, this crop season is starting nicely throughout the Midwest.  Here’s a look at corn planting progress and alfalfa conditions as of May 17 at several points in the Vita Plus market area.

By Jon Urness, Vita Plus national forage specialist
Our Silostop^® Gravelbags are not new and they aren’t improved, but sometimes it’s simply worthwhile to draw attention to a product that is often overlooked in the field.

By Jon Urness, Vita Plus national forage specialist
How much feed can I store in a drive-over pile given a certain area?

University extension services have some excellent tools to help you determine how much feed can be stored in a drive-over pile given a certain area.  Vita Plus also has a very comprehensive Feed Inventory Projector Program.

By Randall Greenfield, Vita Plus dairy specialist
Low milk prices are here. Again. And they’re expected to stick around for the rest of the year.

Justin Brown is an agronomist with Ag Partners Coop based in Goodhue, Minnesota.  He works with producers throughout southeast Minnesota and western Wisconsin.

By Jon Urness, Vita Plus national forage specialist, and Dr. Michelle Windle, Vita Plus forage products and dairy technical service specialist
Last November, we received a call from a Vita Plus consultant in southwest Wisconsin asking about some yeast and mold counts.  He was helping a producer determine the effects of mixing a TMR and feeding it only once every three days to his prefresh group.  He took samples on each of the three days and submitted them for analysis.  He repeated this twice (Mix 1 and 2 from Farm A).  We sampled another mix for comparison in a similar way (Farm B).

Regional reports from Iowa to Michigan on the outlook of winterkill.

By Dr. Michelle Windle, Vita Plus forage products and dairy technical service specialist
Dr. Tom Chamberlain is a veterinarian, nutritionist and member of the Silostop^® technical team.  A silage expert, he consults with dairy farms, veterinarians, milk buyers and government bodies throughout England and Wales, and is the senior author of the standard textbook on dairy cow nutrition in the UK.  He recently shared his insight and interesting data on an increasingly popular feedstuff in the Midwest – baleage.