Depending upon how much silage inventory carryover your farm has on hand, you may be looking at making the switch to new-crop corn silage very soon, if you haven’t already. When making these transitions, it’s important to keep a close eye on starch content and digestibility.

Corn silage levels have been increasing in forage programs the past few years for a number of reasons. The volatile costs of corn and alfalfa hay, coupled with regional drought conditions and subsequent hay availability, have contributed greatly. Given these high corn silage rations now fed, it is no longer sufficient to rely on traditional testing for crude starch content of feed ingredients for ration formulation, especially when opening new crop corn silage.

Making the switch from old-crop corn silage to new-crop corn silage each year can oftentimes challenge milk production, particularly if the new-crop corn silage hasn’t had enough time to ferment. Depending upon location, some dairy producers may already be faced with feeding the recently harvested 2013 corn crop.

As the focus shifts from harvest to planting on most operations, two areas to give consideration to are water and starch availability. Water is a necessity to grow crops, but weather conditions in recent years and water shortages may be driving some dairy producers to consider alternative crops.

Approximately four to five years ago, we saw a steep change in the ingredient markets. Feed prices, particularly corn, skyrocketed. The whole cost structure of operating a dairy jumped without a corresponding increase in milk prices. The impact of these changes continues to play out today.