Every year at the end of the harvest season, we hear, “Next year we are going to (fill in the blank); we just didn’t have time this year.” Now is the time to fill in that blank for corn silage. Here are five of the “blanks” that need to be filled in before harvest starts.

“Our cows are only as productive as the forages we produce for them.” There is nothing closer to the truth than this quote by a dairyman a few months ago. Forages are the foundation for high-producing dairy rations and often determine the level of top-end milk potential.

There are many critical control points in the process of converting “corn forage” to stable, high-quality corn silage.

Alfalfa haylage is a staple in the diets of high-producing dairy cows across the nation primarily due to its significant contributions of crude protein and physically effective fiber (peNDF) in most TMRs. Still, alfalfa remains one of the most difficult and challenging forages to ensile properly. The vast majority of alfalfa is harvested correctly and ferments properly, but we still see about 5 to 10 percent that goes “butyric” due to clostridic fermentation.

Why didn’t it ferment? This question arises more often than you may think. Having reviewed and shared the results of several thousand forage samples in the past few years, when the fermentation profile does not conform to the dairyman’s expectation, invariably the question is asked, “Why didn’t it ferment?”