In this episode of Ruminate This, Dr. Larry Roth revisits the fundamentals of high-quality haylage. From managing moisture to minimizing oxygen exposure, this conversation sharpens your edge heading into haylage season. Even seasoned pros will get value from the timely reminders, practical tips, and behind-the-scenes factors that make or break forage quality. Whether you’re fine-tuning your process or training your team, this episode helps you prepare with purpose.
🎧 Listen now to set your herd up for lifelong success!
Additional Resources
Scott Zehr
All right. Hey, welcome everybody to another edition of Ruminate This with Agrarian Solutions. I’m your host, Scott Zehr. And you know, it is springtime, it is May. And, I’m thinking of all the corn that has been planted around the countryside. I’m thinking of first cutting that’s going in the silos and the bunks and the bags.
And you know, we thought, who better to talk to us today about quality forage than Dr. Larry Ross? So Larry, thanks for jumping on, number one. And number two, you know, we talk a lot about feed hygiene at Agrarian. And oftentimes we’re talking about feed hygiene in terms of, you know, mycotoxins or bunk face management or what we’re doing there once the feedstuff is already ensiled, you know, handling practices, so on.
Let’s talk about quality feed today if we could. And that, that actually plays into the feed hygiene discussion because you can put up what looks like great quality feed on paper and still have poor feed hygiene and still not have quality feed.
Dr. Larry Roth
Absolutely.
Scott Zehr
So, if you’re listening to this episode, the day it aired, it’s gonna be May 19th. I’m sure there’s places that have already caught their first cut grass. Other places are getting ready to. But Larry, let’s walk us through kind of the, the program you’ve put together here at Agrarian just to help people kind of, you know, what are the tips, what are the haylage tips to make a high quality feed that you know, we’re gonna put away for energy, protein, and fiber for these animals.
Dr. Larry Roth
All right. Yep. Thank you for the opportunity to be here, Scott, and visit with you. I think we have to start off with determining what our objectives are. And this is gonna vary by different farms, but I, I’m gonna turn, well, our haylage objective is to create a high quality feed as a source of energy, protein, and fiber.
And, and this is gonna vary. Each dairy producer’s gonna have some different accents, different emphasis on these different areas. Each nutritionist is gonna have a little bit different opinion. But let’s look at what can we do to create that high quality feed to be a source of energy, protein, and fiber.
Scott Zehr
You know you are right. There, there’s people that look at it differently, right? I think. So, I subscribe to the theory that it’s first cutting. Here’s a great opportunity to put up a lot of milk, if you would, a lot of high quality feed. You know, you’re focused on it. So on. You don’t know what the weather’s gonna do come June when it’s time for second cutting, or July and third cutting or so on.
So I always liked the approach of, let’s really hone in on how we can put up awesome first cutting hay. Not everybody does that. There’s a dairy farm just down the road from me, milks 2000 cows. They tend to first, cutting hay, sometimes post June one. That all goes to the heifers and the milk cows get second, third cutting and beyond. Different strategies for different folks.
But, you know, for the folks out there that are thinking of cutting or getting ready to cut, you know, walk us through, ’cause there’s a difference, right? Are we dealing with pure grass? Are we dealing with pure alfalfa stands? Or, you know, what I grew up on Larry? Was a mixture of grass and alfalfa. So when should we be cutting this?
Dr. Larry Roth
You bet. So let, let’s start by thinking about the types of crops that we’re turning into haylage. If we’re talking about pure grass, my recommendation is to start mowing when nearby alfalfa is 15 tall. We’ve got different species of grass across the country. We’ve got some species that we’ve got some real high quality hybrids that are not going to mature quite as fast. Other older grasses that we’re gonna lose our quality in a hurry. And then we’ve got some mixed alfalfa grass stands, and that can vary all the way from being almost all of one to almost all of another.
But with mixed alfalfa grass, recommendation is start mowing when nearby alfalfa is 24 inches tall. And then pure alfalfa, start mowing at 30 inches tall. And that may vary again with some of the hybrids of alfalfa that we’ve got out there so that maintain their quality a little bit more. But, let’s be thinking about when we’re gonna start mowing so we got all of our equipment lined up. Because as we go through our tips here, Scott, you’re gonna see there’s a tremendous amount of synchronization that needs to take place to turn the crop into a high quality feed.
Scott Zehr
Okay. So I’m gonna throw your curveball now. I was just visiting the great state of Maine this past week and there’s not a lot of alfalfa growing in certain parts of that area for us to say, Hey, the alfalfa over here is 30 inches tall. So what do we do? What do we do then?
Dr. Larry Roth
Okay, what maturity of grass are they wanted to mow at? What’s their objective? Is it to get more dry matter, to get more fiber, or is it to get a high quality source of energy?
So that’s where we come back to different farms. So, understand their species. You know, once we start to see blooms out there, be it grass, be it alfalfa, maturity starts to go down in a hurry. If we’re letting our alfalfa get to a 10th bloom, we’ve missed, our peak for quality. And we could say the same on the grass side.
So really I, I could give you some recommendations to start, but it’s gonna depend upon the species of grass and the hybrids that they’ve got. But there’s some other factors we’ve got here that are gonna be consistent across species of crops as well as different objectives.
Scott Zehr
Yeah, there is. And when I think of putting up feed, especially haylage, right? The first thing I think of is dirt.
Dr. Larry Roth
Yep. So I term dirt as one of those cautionary items. We’ve gotta keep the dirt out. Well, how do we measure that? Well, unfortunately we look at that kind of after the fact, and we wanna keep our ash below 10%. I know. Alfalfa, we’re gonna get a lot of calcium, a lot of potassium, especially if we put a lot of manure on. Grasses are typically gonna be a little bit lower mineral content.
But ash content gives us an indication. And today we see increasingly that folks are using disc mores. Disc mowers, man, you, you get some of these 20 foot swathes and we can lay down a tremendous amount of crop in a hurry. But those blades are going like a thousand miles an hour underneath that hood, and they’re creating a tremendous amount of air turbulence, creating a lot of vacuum, and it’s gonna be lifting up dirt.
Well, my concern really isn’t so much dirt per se, it’s manure. And most dairy farms have a lot of manure. So they’re putting a lot of manure on their forage crops, and we have the opportunity to pick up that manure into the crop. And really it’s not manure that we’re concerned about. It’s the clostridia that come with it.
Scott Zehr
Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth
So, if we’ve got our disc mowers and we’re going along human nature is human nature. We wanna get everything that we can so we start to scalp what we’re mowing. And that can be especially true if we’re mowing some winter annuals because it’s not gonna grow back. Well…
Scott Zehr
Right.
Dr. Larry Roth
I think that with our grasses and our alfalfa, we need to be two and a half, three inches or a mowing height, certainly not less than two.
Scott Zehr
Yeah
Dr. Larry Roth
Because we’re wanting to do two things. Number one, come back to keep the dirt out. If we’re at a higher height that we’re mowing at, we’ve lessened our chances that we’re picking up dirt, manure, and clostridia. Also, we’re wanting this crop to dry down in a hurry. If we’re going at a two and a half or preferably three inch height, we’re gonna be lifting the crop up off of the ground.
We got a greater opportunity for air to come underneath and give us a more even dry down. And then let’s think about it from an agronomic standpoint. If we leave more green or photosynthetic material out there, our crop is gonna grow back that much faster. It’s not gonna draw upon root reserves for energy as much, and we’re gonna have a more robust crop that we can get greater stand live.
Some people are on a, every three year they’re gonna rotate out their alfalfa. So maybe they’re not that interested in stand longevity, but they’re probably interested in stand health. Because if we’re weakening that plant, when we mow it, taking everything off and it’s gotta draw upon its grip reserves, it’s just not gonna be as robust as I said earlier.
And that crop is going to be more susceptible to diseases and to insects. So let’s keep the dirt out. Let’s keep our more height, preferably two and a half, three inches. Certainly not less than two inches. And let’s be especially careful when we get on fields where we put a lot of manure application.
Scott Zehr
Yeah, I mean, a lot of good stuff there. And I, I think, from the ash content side, I mean the, you know, mergers have really helped us out, I think a lot compared to the rotary rakes or anything like that where we’re, so I, I think that’s a good thing. But, on the other side, when we merge that hay together, drawing’s pretty much done. So you wanna make sure, you know, we’re, we’re trying to make hay in a day, if at all possible. But boy, we could have a really bad, bad haylage pile if we’re merging that too quickly. So let’s talk about the dry matter, because that’s what we’re, where do we wanna be? And, let’s talk about that. And then subsequently, you know, fermenting the haylage and so on.
Dr. Larry Roth
You bet. So our objective should be to keep dry matter above 35%. Or moisture under 65%. And you’re right, we’re trying to do this in a day. We go out in the morning, we mow it, and again, man, we can lay down a tremendous amount of crop in a hurry.
So the challenge is we, we may shoot for a higher dry matter content than 35 and, and I applaud that. But what is our chopping capability? What’s our packing capability? And so I say, let’s keep that dry matter above 35%. And that may seem a little bit low, could be. But I’m thinking, here’s where I’m starting at, and here’s where I’m gonna end at the end of the day.
And let’s talk about how we’re gonna get that crop to dry down. We wanna lay the crop out as wide as what we can. Because one of the ways that the plant’s gonna dry down is through photosynthesis. If we have sunlight falling on our crop, the crop is really still alive. It’s been cut off from its roots, sure. But it’s still alive.
So the way that the plant is gonna dry down, two principle ways. First way, it’s going to be taking moisture that’s in the stem and in the leaf with sunlight and creating sugars. That’s a good thing. That’s energy. That’s good. Is getting rid of moisture and it’s giving us more energy.
The second way the plant is gonna dry down is just by wilting. When plants get hot, the way they cool themselves is to pull moisture through the stems, from the roots, but we’re not attached to the roots anymore. Through the stem and through the leaves to cool down. If we’ve already put it in a great big high windrow, well, there’s a lot of that crop that’s gonna be in the dark underneath.
And when the crop is dark, rather than making sugars, is gonna be doing the reverse of photosynthesis, gonna be breaking down sugars and making more moisture. So lay the crop out. And here’s a controversial one for you, Scott. Take the conditioner off. What does the conditioner do? Conditioner destroys the stems.
Well, if we’ve destroyed our, the stems, the vascular material, how are we gonna draw moisture out of the stem into the leaf to make more sugar? If we’ve destroyed the stem, how are we gonna draw that moisture up into the leaf for the wilting process to get rid of moisture? We’re not gonna be able to do that.
So if we’re gonna be creating haylage or baylage, take the mow conditioner off. If we’re trying to do dry hay, where the challenge is that last little bit of moisture in the stem, go ahead and crimp the livid daylights outta it. But, I’m gonna advocate, if we’re trying to do the haylage in a day, take the conditioner off, lay the crop out as wide as what we can. Well, then we come back to the merger you were talking about before.
Once we merge the crop, dry down stops, because again, goes back to the windrow I was talking about before. We’ve got a lot of crop that’s in the dark now and we’re not making sugar anymore. We’re breaking sugar down, we’re creating moisture. So lay it out as wide as we can, merge it, rake it, whatever. Be careful.
With some of our rakes, some of these tenors, they get very aggressive and we can lose leaves. Leaves is where all of the nutrition is. Leaves is where the protein and where the energy is. So we don’t wanna go too early, we’re gonna be too wet. We’ll talk about that some more. But once, but we don’t wanna get too dry either.
So we gotta have everything synchronized and we’re ready to go. So let me give you an equation, Scott. Ash or manure or clostridia plus too much water in the crop, equals clostridia and butera. It’s that simple. And reduced energy. So we’re paying attention to our ash. We’re paying attention to our water because that’s what’s gonna determine a lot of our quality right there. Our enemies, our water and clostridia. And I don’t know which is the bigger enemy, clostridia or water. They, they seem to go together.
Scott Zehr
Well, that’s a great point. There’s nothing more disheartening than breaking into a bunk and, you know, you just had this feeling, man, we just, we, we put it up just a little bit too wet and then you start feeding it out and the cows just break loose and it’s, it smells bad. They don’t eat it as good. It’s bad for their gut, whole nine yards.
Dr. Larry Roth
So often it’s with that very best crop. Because we wanted to get that alfalfa before it bloomed. We wanted to get our grass before there were any seed heads out there, before it was blooming. And that is the crop that’s gonna be most inclined to go clostridia goes.
Scott Zehr
Yep. Yep. So talk to us about chop length.
Dr. Larry Roth
Alright, chop length. There’s a good controversial topic, but it’s gonna vary with matter content. It’s gonna vary with nutritionist, and it’s gonna vary with the objective of why we’re feeding it. You know, typically, I’m gonna say that we’re gonna shoot for some wires in that probably 15 to 18 millimeter for length.
To me, the big thing is make sure those knives stay sharp. As we go through the course of the day, somebody’s gotta be looking at particulate matter and they’ve gotta be having the opportunity to say, Hey, we need to get those knives sharp. We need to be paying attention to what we’re doing. If we’re starting to get all raggedy and starting to get long, we’re going to have troubles packing. If we’re too short, we’re gonna have problems with upset rumens later on when we’re feeding this crop out.
So generally somewhere’s in that 15 to 18 millimeters for a length. The drier the crop is the shorter it needs to be. So we get a better pack. The wetter the crop is, we can lengthen out the particles so that we still have good rumen health and rumination.
Scott Zehr
You know, you mentioned packing and I had a chance to visit a farm this past week. I guess it’d be a couple of weeks ago. And one of the guys made the comment that well if, if so and so wants to go home and he wants to go have dinner with his wife, that’s fine. I’m gonna keep chopping and I’m gonna just dump the haylage right there and he can pack it tomorrow.
Larry, I think a lot of people know this, but it’s one of those things that in the heat of the moment, you tend to forget, but who determines how quickly we can chop?
Dr. Larry Roth
Well before we…
Scott Zehr
Oh yeah. I don’t wanna, if you, if you wanna…
Dr. Larry Roth
Who from this wouldn’t be chop? Well, that’s gonna be based upon dry matter content.
Scott Zehr
No. How quickly we can chop.
Dr. Larry Roth
Okay. Somebody’s gotta be looking at moisture and that is one of the hardest things to do. Unfortunately, the only way we’re gonna really know what moisture we’re at, is taking a run at it, going out and chopping some.
But generally we’re gonna have some kind of an idea for our location, the amount of sunlight we’re getting, our crop, how heavy our yield was, the amount of sunlight we’re getting, our temperatures, we’re gonna have some kind of indication. But really the only way to do that is go out there and chop some.
And then I think part of the challenge we get into is some parts of the country we have flat, even fields that are completely open and we get the wind blowing. We get other parts of the country where it’s hilly. The soil is inconsistent, the yield is inconsistent. We’ve got trees, we’ve got creeks, we’ve got rivers, we got variations in humidity. So that’s where the art comes in. Knowing our fields…
Scott Zehr
Right.
Dr. Larry Roth
Knowing the crop and knowing the conditions. And so that’s where I think we need to be able to tolerate a range in dry matter or moisture content, however you wanna look at it. But there’s some things that we can do to work with that range in dry matter content.
Scott Zehr
All right, so this is probably less controversial, maybe on haylage, but let’s talk inoculates for a minute. Give us some insight on, you know, what’s the benefit there to put a good inoculate on that haylage? And what type of inoculate should we be looking at?
Dr. Larry Roth
You bet. Well, the first comment on that I wanna make is I do not sell an inoculate, today. I have in the past, I’ll put them together for different people. But I would say that haylage is, be it grass, be it a winter annual, be it alfalfa are the hardest crop to get to ferment. We don’t have as high a sugar content as we do with corn silage. And what we’ve gotta do is drop the pH as fast as we can so that we can control the clostridia.
Again, I keep coming back to the clostridia and Scott, it may seem like I have a hangup about that, and perhaps I do, because that’s the biggest thing that causes a fall off in hygiene, a fall off in energy and protein is if clostridia have their way. So we look at a nice inoculant that’s got a lot of lactic acid producing bacteria.
Now it’s not the lactic acid that’s gonna cause ruminal pH to go down, but it’s a type of lactate that can decrease the pH, but yet rumen bacteria can utilize that lactate to create propionate later on. So our whole objective within inoculant is to come in with a lot of lactic acid producing bacteria to decrease the pH as fast as we can and save the sugar.
Our objective should be to have a pH below five, within three to four days. With corn silage, we wanna be below four very quickly. But with haylage, we don’t have as much sugar and be it grass, be it winter, annual, or alfalfa, we just got more mineral there, we’ve probably picked up a little bit of dirt and all of that works like a buffer.
So think of it this way. Equation for you again. Lactate plus moderate water, depresses clostridia, and butyric. So there’s a couple things we always need to be thinking about. What’s our dirt? What’s our moisture? What’s our lactate? What’s our clostridia, and what’s our butyric? And what can we do to influence each of those factors?
Scott Zehr
That’s a good point. So, you know, we’re chopping it, we’re applying it. A lot of times we’re applying it right through the chopper. So probably, the step of the process that can make or break us right here. We’ve done everything right up to this point. And, you know, we’re talking about packing and, if you guys are working in upright silos, you know, this is not quite as applicable to you obviously, but, I’m thinking of, of the big pack tractors going back and forth forever.
And I have some friends of mine, Larry, they, they love seeing springtime come and they hate riding in the pack tractor for 12, 15 hours a day. But, you, you got, I mean, you can’t overpack these haylage piles. So give us a little insight as to why we spend so much time talking about packing the haylage pile.
Dr. Larry Roth
You bet. I have a lot of hangups, Scott, as you may have determined, and one of those hangups is yeast. We’ve done a good job of saving our sugar. We’ve brought in the leaves. We created the photosynthesis out there in the field. We got good sugar. Well, if we don’t do a good job of packing, we leave oxygen in our crop that’s fermenting to a feed, and those yeast are gonna be able to grow without oxygen, and they’re gonna metabolize the sugar.
Well if they metabolize the sugar we just lost our energy. So we’ve only got one opportunity to really control the yeast, and that’s with a lot of packing. So we wanna pack and pack and pack some more. If we leave oxygen in that feed, I’ll call it a feed now because we brought it in and we’ve started the fermentation process. If we leave oxygen in our feed, we’re gonna lose our sugar.
Now the clostridia, they can grow in the absence of oxygen. But let’s shift our focus over now to the yeast. So, we wanna have thin layers of our crop that we’re turning into a feed. Let’s have those layers less than six inches. If we bring in a tremendous amount of crop in a hurry. And we can do that because we can chop a tremendous amount.
We can bring it in by the semi-load, we can dump it there at the pile or the bunker, and now the pack tractor or pack tractor’s gotta somehow keep up with it. So I’m gonna make a dangerous comment here. Whoever is on the pack tractor or the lead tractor driver, should be able to call the shots for how fast chopping is going, how fast hauling is going.
If the amount of crop coming in to the bunker or the pile is getting ahead of what can be effectively packed, we gotta stop because we only got one opportunity to pack, one opportunity to stop the oxygen and the yeast from destroying our crop. And the, and the drier the haylage is the more packing we gotta have.
So the drier, the haylage, the shorter the chop length, the more packing that we’ve got to do. Now I think the ag engineers over at UW Madison have probably researched packing more than anybody else in the world. And Scott they’ve got an equation that’s about three foot long to determine what your packing weight should be.
I’m gonna simplify it. We should really take into account moisture particle length and, and a whole bunch of other factors. But let’s just go 200 times, the tons coming in per hour, and that’s gonna tell us what our packing weight ought to be. And the challenge is, so often with modern chopping equipment and hauling trucks, we’re not gonna have enough weight there. And think about it. Everything that we’re doing with our tractors today is designed to reduce soil compaction.
Scott Zehr
And what are we trying to do.
Dr. Larry Roth
Yep. And we’re trying to do more compaction here.
Scott Zehr
Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth
So I know. Yep. We can put duals on and we’re gonna be able to cover more area, but we’ve just reduced pounds per square inch of packing. So there, there’s things that we need to take into account.
Scott Zehr
Great point.
Dr. Larry Roth
What’s our footprint with our tractor when we’re up there? How many do we have? Talk about synchronized swimming. We’ve got synchronized packing because we may have a whole bunch of crop coming into the bunker or the, or the pile.
We may have multiple tractors. We don’t want any accidents. We don’t want anybody to get hurt. And so everybody’s gotta be paying attention to what’s going on. And when we create this pile, we wanna be able to drive over it every which way. If we’re just going one way, one way, we’re not gonna get our sides packed enough.
Couple of of stories. Probably, and I know we’re talking about haylage, but I talk about corn silage for just a moment. I was at a farm, won’t mention the state, and they had bunkers. And they had a tremendous amount of corn silage they brought in and ooh, they were proud of themselves. They were proud. And they had it stacked real high, but they were only going down the middle.
We don’t want to tip any tractors over. So I used to walk around with one of those FL cameras to measure temperature. And again, I have a boring life, Scott. I like to look at these formatted feeds and I went over there and dug into the side a little bit. Whew. 150 degrees. You think any sugar was left in that?
No. The yeast were having a hayday. They had metabolized the sugars and they had taken what protein was there. Granted it was corn silage, but had made it heat damaged and not available to the rumen. So let’s think about our, our, our haylage.
Scott Zehr
Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth
We got that crop put up at a good protein level, we’re gonna have a lot of protein that we’re gonna be able to put in the ru as of the cows, so we don’t have to buy as much soybean meal. I got it.
We didn’t pack like we should. We didn’t get our sides packed and it heats up. We get that black stuff there where the yeast heated it up. Yeah, there’s protein there, we can go assay it. There’s protein there. But it’s the acid detergent and soluble protein. It’s heat damaged. Congratulations. You got a good protein in your haylage, but it’s not available. Why? Because we didn’t pack it the way that we should have. So then, then we get to the…
Scott Zehr
Larry, I’m not quite as long in the tooth as you are, but I’m old enough to remember history, not that I was here for that. But just about a month ago I was on a dairy. We were looking at their bunks and, and I made the comment about, boy, I’m a really big fan of these drive over piles. And we got in a little, not a heated argument by any means, but we, the farm was telling why he liked his walls and so I just kind of chuckled and said, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall.
Dr. Larry Roth
Yeah. Well, I mean, we, we get next to these bunker walls and maybe we’ve put plastic on the side, which I think is a good thing to do. We don’t wanna tear up that plastic, and so we don’t get the packing next to the wall that we should. We don’t wanna tip our tractor over once we get above those walls. And so, so often we get spoilage next to the wall.
Scott Zehr
Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth
Again, Scott, I have a boring life. I like to look at formatted feeds. And we can look at the face of the feed and it’s just like a geologist looking at a road cut or looking at a canyon. We can look at that silage face, haylage face, and we can tell there was that field where the alfalfa was a little bit too wet.
There’s that field where it was a little bit too dry. Oh, I can see right where we went from two pack tractors to one pack tractor. So consistency, consistency, consistency. And then I think there we get to those times when, well, I’m gonna stay on the pack for a little bit longer and do some more packing.
Well, the end of the day, packing is really only doing that very top layer. We only get one chance to do the different layers. That’s when the crop came in. So end of the day packing, good. We stay there a little bit longer, but it’s only doing that real last layer. So everything else is so important. The starting time.
What’s the crop maturity? Keeping the dirt out. Keeping the moisture right, watching our chop length, putting the inoculate there so we get a lot of lactic acid. Let’s make sure we pack it right. And that’s where I’m going to give some authority to the pack tractor or the lead tractor driver to say, you’ve got back off. You’re getting ahead of me. Or, hey, come on. I can take a little bit more.
Scott Zehr
Larry we’ve packed this pile. We’ve done it right to this point. And here’s one of my pet peeves is, and I understand haylage, if you were to go out and buy it. You know, in, in my area, it it’s, it’s the cheaper forage, right? It’s not as expensive as corn silage. It’s maybe 30, $30 a ton or maybe a little more, depending.
But gosh darn it, we have just invested how many man hours? How many gallons of fuel oil? How much wear and tear on our a hundred thousand dollars plus pieces of equipment? And that’s just talking about a part of the tractor. I should say, almost a million dollar piece of equipment.
And then I see so many, even to this day, I still see so many bunks that do not get covered. And then, you know, that’s the extreme. But then within that bell curve, I really, really applaud and respect the folks out there that are putting up haylage that will not go to bed until that pile is covered.
Dr. Larry Roth
Yep.
Scott Zehr
And you know, we’re not gonna wait till seven o’clock tomorrow morning. We’re not gonna wait till noon when we get, it’s convenient. We’re gonna have a few men here, and as long as we can work safely at eight o’clock at night, we’re gonna get it covered. I really applaud those guys for that.
Dr. Larry Roth
Oh, you bet.
Scott Zehr
Talk to us about the importance of getting that covered as soon as possible.
Dr. Larry Roth
You bet. So again, what are our three enemies? Clostridia, yeast, and I’m gonna lump oxygen in there because if we keep oxygen in the crop, in the feed, the plant’s gonna continue its own respiration of breaking itself down. So we gotta keep the oxygen out via packing. But we also gotta put oxygen limiting plastic on. I don’t sell oxygen limiting plastic.
I never have. But, I think it’s one of the most critical steps. Again, just like what you said, Scott, how much money have we put into this man hours? Let’s face it. We could have used that ground to grow soybeans or corn. So there’s an opportunity cost that we got with this feed. It’s important.
So what are we doing to maintain the quality by covering it with an oxygen limiting plastic, a high quality oxygen limiting plastic as soon as we can? 1,002 things we gotta do on the farm and we get to the end of the day. You know what, let’s knock off and we’ll cover it tomorrow.
Well, what happens tomorrow? The wind comes up. Okay, well, we’ll wait till the wind goes down. And something else comes up. Cover it as soon as we can. Oxygen limiting plastic. Put the side walls on there to keep the oxygen out and hold that plastic down.
It’s one of the, I’m gonna go ahead and say probably one of the most neglected steps. We’ll get to it tomorrow, we’ll get to it the next day. Let’s cover it up as soon as we can. And I think one of the things that comes with it is, man, we get multiple fields to chop. We’re not gonna do it all right away. So are we going to put this, the haylage we’re gonna chop in a couple of days on top of crop that we just put in there? Do we cover it in the meantime? I think we do.
Scott Zehr
Yes, we do.
Dr. Larry Roth
And we, we see this happening so often is that we’ve got multiple chopping days piled on other days and what are we doing to protect? ‘Cause again, we come back to boring life looking at the face, or I can tell when we’re chopping that on Friday. Because it’s on top of Wednesday and that was different than what we chopped on Monday. I think we gotta cover it when we get done with each chopping day. Control the yeast that’s there. Let me go back to packing for just a moment.
We get some areas where we just we’re chopping all of the time. We’re chopping every week, and we continue to make multiple drive over piles, but they’re all shoehorned together, and we just don’t get the sides because we wanna be safe. We don’t wanna tip the tractor over, always drive over every which direction.
And if we’re not, because all of our piles are too close together, that’s where we have the losses of dry matter and nutrition on the side. Plus we get the wild yeast that are gonna mess up the rumen later on.
Scott Zehr
Larry, if we don’t drive over the sides of the pile, that’s our heifer feed, right? That’s where we make our heifer feed?
Dr. Larry Roth
Oh, that’s great. Yeah, we’re, we’re creating that low quality heifer feed because we lost all the energy, so it’s lower energy. We don’t wanna get heifers too fat. The yeast had their way, so now our protein, the protein’s there, but it’s just not available. And then we got the wild yeast there so that this heifer feed is full of wild yeast, is gonna mess up the heifer’s rumen. And then we wonder why the heifers don’t grow and why they’re not ready to breed on time. But at least we got some cheap feed for it.
Scott Zehr
I, I really liked the comment that I heard recently: if you wanna raise low quality heifers, feed ’em low quality feed.
Dr. Larry Roth
Absolutely. You bet.
Scott Zehr
I’ve come to load that term heifer feed. I don’t like it.
Dr. Larry Roth
Yep. Yep. That, that’s kind of an excuse for not doing things the right way. How’s that for stepping on toes?
Scott Zehr
Well, sometimes we all need a kick in the pants once in a while. Myself included. So, if you’re out there doing a great job with this, and Larry, you and I get a chance to travel across this blessed country and see a lot of amazing farmers doing an amazing job putting up crops.
I mean, I’m, I’m going through the Rolodex of places that you and I have been together in the Northeast, and I’m thinking of those guys right now, I’m not gonna say their names on the podcast, but, you and I know who I’m talking about, and it’s just they do a tremendous job. And I really applaud you guys for doing that because it takes effort.
Dr. Larry Roth
Yep.
Scott Zehr
But at the same time, you spend just as much time, resources, and energy putting up a poor crop is you do a good crop. And so if, if you’re out there and you’re looking at your, your haylage pile and your nutritionist or your, your farm staff has made the comment that, boy, if only we could have done a better job of haylage.
Dr. Larry Roth
Yep.
Scott Zehr
It took just as much time and energy and resources to put up a poor crop.
Dr. Larry Roth
Absolutely. We, we lost money doing that. Lost money doing that. But, that’s okay. We can go buy some soybean meal to make up for that protein that’s not available. We can put some more corn in there to make up for the energy that we lost.
Scott Zehr
Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth
You already spent the money. Let’s save it so we don’t have to go spend some more.
Scott Zehr
I like that. I like it. Larry, so I know you and our colleague Chad, out in Minnesota, have recently even visited with some farms about this. And we intend to kind of consider putting up high quality feed, having this consultation with farms, with nutritionists as a value added service.
I know you’re already looking forward to talking about corn silage in the fall with folks. And so what I would say is if you’re listening and you’d like to get in touch with us or Dr. Roth, email us [email protected]. Again, that’s [email protected] and Larry has also put together a PDF with the points on it that we have covered today and I’m sure we can make that available in our show notes for a reference.
Dr. Larry Roth
You bet. Absolutely.
Scott Zehr
Any parting words you’d like to share with the Ruminate This audience today?
Dr. Larry Roth
Well, if your objective is to create a high quality feed, you gotta start at the right time before the crop gets too mature. You gotta keep the dirt out so the clostridia don’t come in. You gotta get it at the right moisture so it’s not too wet or not too dry leaves out in the field. You gotta get the right chop length so that we can get it packed right, but also so that we have good rumen and health.
We’ve gotta drop the pH as soon as we can to save the energy. Save the protein, ’cause the clostridia will destroy our protein as well. And then we gotta pack it as soon as we can because the oxygen is gonna encourage the wild yeast to grow and they’re gonna steal the sugar and make the protein unavailable, and then cover it as soon as you can. Easy to do right, Scott?
Scott Zehr
Easy peasy. I love it. Dr. Roth, I thank you for joining us today on Ruminate This with Agrarian Solutions. My final words, Larry, to everybody listening, it’s a wonderful time of the year. I love the springtime. Everything’s growing, everything’s happening. Be safe out there.
Safety first everybody. Don’t tip those tractors over on the piles, but you know, all all that stuff. So be safe out there. Happy planting. Happy harvesting, and we will be talking again soon.
Dr. Larry Roth
Alright. Thank you scott.
