Forages are by weight the main component of dairy cow rations greatly influencing production, profitability and cow well-being. High-quality digestible forages help cows face the challenges derived from the increased nutrient demands of peripartum and lactation.

For those who know me well, especially my husband, they would not list decisiveness as one of my strong qualities. At the risk of sounding cliché, the typical sitcom-couple restaurant situation plays out in our household on a regular basis and extends beyond restaurants to weeknight meal planning. Decision-making is a delicate process, one where we must weigh the outcome of a variety of options, and in my meal-planning scenario, the outcome is known.

If surviving four generations in the dairy business has taught the Freitag family anything, it’s that minimizing input costs while optimizing outputs is essential to survive an inconsistent market.

Editor’s note: This article is the third in a four-part series about how an Oregon dairy farmer is making robots work on a grazing system. Read the three other articles How we milk 3 times a day with robots for success, Robot repairs: The solution or the problem? and Free-flow grazing with milking robots promotes animal wellness.

Where climate is adequate for its growth, corn silage is the main forage in intensive cattle production systems. Warm regions of the world usually allow for a double corn crop, thereby maximizing land use. In other regions with well-defined seasons, corn is harvested only once, leaving the land oftentimes fallow during the rest of the year.