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As the 2014 silage season approaches, producers will be turning their thoughts to making sure everything is prepped and ready for the annual battle to ensure sufficient top-quality preserved feeds are available to maximize profitability.
While many producers may have already been locked in to their forage inoculant during winter seed sales campaigns, there are also many who are still weighing their options, considering whether to use a different microbial inoculant on hay silage versus corn silage.
When I left the university with my master’s degree in 1976 and joined a fertilizer retail chain as agronomist, corn yields averaged about 140 bushels per acre.
At the same time in North Dakota, where I have been North Dakota State University extension soil specialist for almost 20 years, yields were about 80 bushels. When I visit old corn grower friends in Illinois, they tell me that their average is over 200 bushels per acre, and corn growers in eastern North Dakota often average over 160 bushels per acre.
The dairy industry has come a long way in formulating and delivering quality dairy diets. It’s really quite extraordinary the level of information dairy producers and nutritionists now have at their fingertips about each ingredient included in rations.
This data allows producers to deliberately and carefully feed groups of cows according to their specific needs in order to maximize production and efficiency while supporting cow health and productivity.
This article was #7 of the Top 25 most well-read articles on www.progressivedairy.com in 2014. It was published in the Jan. 17, 2014 Extra e-newsletter.
So that’s where the money went! Feed costs are the Achilles’ heel of a dairy. Many dairymen prepare cost budgets based on the nutritionist’s ration but do not account for losses in the mixing process by cows sorting at the bunk or by what was lost to birds and raccoons.
The right mix of product treatment and some simple farm management techniques can greatly enhance dairy producers’ ability to increase nutrient efficiency in manure applied on land and used by growing crops.
In November, Jeremy Natzke of Wayside Dairy LLC in Wayside, Wisconsin, and Doug Block of Hunter Haven Farms, Inc. in Pearl City, Illinois, were panelists for a seminar titled “Feeding the 40,000-Pound Cow” at the PDPW Feed and Nutrition Conference. The two dairymen compared notes on how they have exceeded 90-pound-per-day averages and how they believe they will capture the next 10 pounds of milk.
The 2013 weather continued the forage woes of U.S. dairy producers. The late-March warm-up in the upper Midwest, followed by freezing rain and then a major cold snap in early April, led to winterkill of alfalfa and ryegrass across large sections of central Iowa, through southern Minnesota, central Wisconsin and into central Michigan.
The foundation of dairy cow nutrition is forage. Forage is the primary source of effective fiber in a cow’s diet and is essential for optimal rumen fermentation.
Forage quality impacts feed intakes, cow health and, ultimately, milk production. In order for a forage be considered high-quality, it must be palatable and the fiber must be highly digestible.
This article was #11 of the Top 25 most well-read articles on www.progressivedairy.com in 2014. It was published in the Dec. 11, 2013 Extra e-newsletter.
This article was written as a follow up to our No. 1 most well-read article in 2013, “Two dairymen are making profits with sprout fodder systems.” Freelance writer Kelli Boylen addressed online comments from that original article that requested more input from industry experts.
Colostrum and calves seems like an old topic. Good-quality colostrum fed to calves shortly after birth leads to passive transfer of immunity. Have you heard this before?
Of course – but the old book on colostrum may be getting a new chapter. Colostrum is now being looked at as not just a source of antibodies but as a source of many nutrients and immune components.
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