Now that corn is 100 percent planted, growers are now focusing on nourishing the crop to make good silage.
Jason Fettig, DEKALB technical agronomist, says there are a few things growers can do to prepare.
“Folks should think about fertility, and don’t typically,” he said. “A lot of times we treat our corn silage like our corn grain. Corn silage does require a little more nitrogen than what a corn grain does—nitrogen’s got a big role to play in the amount of protein content that’s in corn silage. It roughly equates to about 20 pounds per acre more than your typical corn grain.”
Growers also need to be properly managing weeds in the fields they plan on using for silage.
“If you leave weeds in the silage crop, that will affect the digestibility, palatability—things like velvetleaf effects palatability to the cows,” said Fettig. “There’s also certain weeds that can have toxic effects.”
The third thing Fettig advises that farmers need to prepare is fungicide applications.
“It’s shown that fungicides help protect that green tissue on those leaves so that more foliage ends up healthy and green at chopping time,” he said. “If you can keep diseases out like northern corn leaf blight, grey leaf spot, and things that affect green tissue, that’s going to help improve silage quality.”
Fettig also suggests that growers look at this year’s data to make plans for the future.
“Is there a difference in hybrid selection, things that they might have done differently in looking at how things might have emerged, or how early they got in, would they wanted to plan a little bit longer? [You should be] thinking about how things look right now and thinking to the future and hybrid selection at the end.”
At the end of the day, Fettig says it’s about having a healthy silage crop to have healthy cattle and dairy cows.
“With commodity prices, there aren’t a lot of dairy guys that are too excited to buy $8 corn, but it’s going to be crucial for growers to think about maximizing their yields and feed efficiency,” he said. “Whether it’s fertility, disease control, fungicides, weed control or hybrid selection, it all goes down to feed efficiency and maximizing yields.”
