Chopping block: Growing season pushes silage later into September

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WINNEBAGO, Ill. – Silage harvest on the Mitchell farm is three to four weeks later than a typical year.

“That tracks back to planting,” said John Mitchell who together with his brother, Aaron, are partners in Mitchell Dairy and Grain LLC. “Even during the summer we thought we’d chop around Labor Day but then we had rain the last couple of weeks.”

The silage harvest is typically a four-day process. The custom harvest crew chops 7,000 tons of silage from about 250 acres for the 400-cow registered Holstein herd.

“Thankfully, we had quite a bit of silage carryover from last year, about 1,000 tons,” Mitchell said. “That should be enough to get us to mid-November, which is good to let the new silage ferment to be more digestible by the time we start feeding it.”

That amount of silage carryover is larger than most years. “That’s a combination of a lot of hay, so we fed more haylage and less corn silage,” Mitchell explained. “And also when we were getting done with corn silage last year we chopped an additional 20 acres than we originally planned because the corn was starting to fall down.”

One of the fields this year was planted with a Pioneer silage variety. “We are segregating that silage into one of the bunkers so we can test it to see of we want to plant that variety again,” the dairyman explained. “It’s a little taller and it looks really good.

“The plants have stayed really healthy and corn kernels have dried down faster in comparison to the plant than usual,” Mitchell noted. “Different hybrids have been the same way and I’ve heard the same thing from other people this year.”

In addition to a pile, some of the silage is also going into bunkers. “One of the bunkers had ryelage that we had been feeding all summer, so it was about three-quarters empty,” Mitchell said. “And another bunker has second-cutting haylage which was about half gone so we switched to feeding haylage out of a bag which was third cutting.”

Mitchell grabbed a sample off the silage pile to get an idea of the moisture content. “We use an air fryer and put 100 grams of wet feed in and it takes about 25 minutes at 250 degrees,” he explained.

The sample is weighed after it is dried. “It’s at 34% dry matter or 66% moisture so that’s good because it’s in the range of 65 to 68% that we are shooting for,” the dairyman said.

To check the kernel processing during harvest, Mitchell fills a 32-ounce cup with corn silage and spreads it out to see if there are any whole kernels of corn in the sample. The recommendation is two or less of whole or half kernels.

“I did not find any whole ones and I’d be pretty hard-pressed to say there were even any half kernels,” he reported. “So I’m pretty happy with the processing of the kernels.”

Two Vita Plus inoculates are applied with the silage chopper as the corn is harvested. “We’re using a Crop-N-Rich that is a basic all crop inoculate and a half rate of their Lactobacillus buchneri that is an inoculate more specific to corn that creates an acetic acid fermentation,” the dairyman said.

Hoof trimming

The hoof trimmer was also at the dairy farm on Tuesday, which is usually done weekly. “About four months ago our hoof trimmer had a heart issue,” Mitchell said. “His son is also a hoof trimmer so he came every other week and tried to do twice as many animals.

“Today, there are 60 cows on the list but usually it’s 30 cows per week,” the dairyman said. “Our goal is to trim the hooves of every cow three times a year.”

Hoof trimming of cows is done at 120 to 140 days in milk, 260 to 280 days in milk and about three weeks prior to being dried off. “We want to get them through the dry period and calving with good feet so they’re not challenged by lameness,” Mitchell noted. “And all springing heifers come back here four weeks before they calve so they get done during that first week back at this farm.”

Lameness is one of the bigger challenges at the Mitchell farm. “We can’t put our finger on the particular cause so that’s why we switched to trimming three times a year instead of two that most people do,” he explained. “There is a potential for less wear on the hooves with the manure solids bedding which is not as abrasive as sand.”

Milk production has been fluctuating a little at the Winnebago County farm. “Since the weather can’t decide if its summer or fall, raining or dry, milk production has been up in general, but up and down amongst that,” Mitchell said.

With corn silage harvest in progress, Mitchell made a switch to feeding the opposite side of the silage pile and to two different bags. “I’m a little nervous about that,” he stated.

“The corn silage is from the same pile, so that should be similar and the ryelage looks like it will be similar since the moisture is within 1%,” he said. “But the haylage is third cutting verses second cutting so that could be a difference, but it looks good, so we’ll see.”

Class III milk price has fallen, Mitchell said, but Class IV is staying pretty strong. “Cash prices for cheese and butter are as high as they’ve ever been,” he added. “Butter set a record a week or two ago for the highest it’s ever been per pound.”

The dairymen plan to harvest the fifth cutting of alfalfa on 80 acres of their total alfalfa acres. “Those 80 acres will be taken out of production after this year and the rest of the acres we’re going to let go to build up root reserves,” he said. “We could have cut all the alfalfa a couple of weeks ago but we didn’t think it had grown enough to be worth the harvest cost.”

In addition, now the dairymen don’t have to worry about frost damage. “After the last cutting, we need six to eight weeks of growth before a frost and we tend to be conservative on that,” Mitchell said. “Our average first frost is usually about Oct. 28.”

The fifth cutting of alfalfa may be chopped or baled. “We may have to make baleage if the choppers are doing corn silage,” he said. “And if it’s not super high quality then we’ll have heifer feed.”