
Goeser: Does Your Customer’s Forage Have a Story to Tell?
Posted on December 4, 2012 in Forage Foundations

A report card reflecting high performance can help justify a higher value to service. In a real scenario from a Michigan dairy farm, Goeser reported a dairy that saw a savings of 73 cents per cow per day when it was able to reduce its amount of feed additives fed because it now fed higher quality forage.
“Your product is a service of providing high quality and consistent feed all year long. A report card could help you get away from trying to be cheaper than competition,” he said.
Goeser’s “Straight A” report card for custom harvesters includes the following benchmarks:
Density
- Dry matter density greater than 20 pounds per cubic foot
- As-fed density greater than 44 pounds per cubic foot
Temperatures
- Core temperature less than 65°F for corn silage, less than 75°F for haylage, with cooler edges
- Surface temperature less than 15°F range
Fermentation
- pH less than 4.0 for corn silage, less than 4.5 for haylage
- Greater than 3 percent lactic acid
- Less than 2 percent acetic acid (higher if using L. buchneri inoculant)
- 0 percent butyric acid
- Less than 10 percent ammonia-N
Microbials
- Yeast less than 100,000 cfu/g
- Mold less than 10,000 cfu/g
He added the following tips to achieve some extra credit:
- Meet with customer to set expectations and goals before the crop is planted.
- Chop high quality forage.
- Put your kingpin on the pack tractor to monitor the forage entering storage.
- Inoculate, seal and seal some more.
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Feed quality and nutrition Forage Foundations Forage harvesting Forage storage and management |