Corn silage harvest is about more than filling the bunker. It is one of the biggest opportunities to protect profitability on the dairy and set the herd up for success over the coming year.
In this episode of Ruminate This, Dr. Larry Roth, Vice President of Nutrition at Agrarian Solutions, explains why corn silage should be managed like one of the farm’s most valuable assets. He discusses how harvest timing, kernel processing, packing density, dry matter testing, storage management, and feedout strategy all influence forage quality, shrink, mycotoxin risk, feed efficiency, milk production, and components.
Whether you’re managing the dairy or helping producers build feeding programs, you’ll gain practical insights to improve forage management, protect the value of every ton harvested, and support healthier cows, stronger performance, and better returns.
🎧 Listen now to set your herd up for lifelong success!
Scott Zehr: All right. Hey, welcome back to Ruminate This with Agrarian Solutions. Joining myself today, I have Dr. Larry Roth, our Vice President of Nutrition. I’m Scott Zehr, back in the seat, glad to be with you guys. And Larry, man, what’s more fun in agriculture to talk than to, to talk about than talking about money?
Yeah we have so much money in agriculture, I just… Back on the dairy, I just thought we always had so much money to pass around and… Oh, wait, then reality hit me. Yeah, Larry, we work in tight margins in the dairy world, in, in the beef world, in any world where we’re harvesting crops, where we’re taking a risk in the spring, we’re putting out crops, we’re hoping we have a good growing season, we’re harvesting them, we’re feeding them to try to get an ROI, whether it’s milk or beef or what have you.
And so today’s episode really is I’d like to talk to you about asset management. And, when I think of that term asset management, my brain always goes to some venture capitalist company that has teams of people that help guide the decision-making process on managing their portfolio of assets.
That’s where my brain goes. But when I think about asset management on a dairy really in any farming operation Larry I come to corn silage. I come to the corn that we raise, whether it’s corn silage or even grain corn or high moisture, whatever, could be soybeans, could be haylage, the crops that we’re putting out in the field in the spring and hoping for an ROI later, there’s so many variables that go into getting a good crop.
We’re very weather dependent, time dependent, all of it. And I’m not saying anything new. But there’s a reason the term corn silage season exists, because that’s how it is treated. It’s treated like an event. And there’s a lot of time and energy spent to make sure this harvest season goes off well.
Larry, in, in previous episodes, which is episode 52 back on August 4th of 2025, we talked about the fundamentals of things we need to pay attention to put up good corn silage. And I’d like to talk to you today on how do we manage that asset to make sure we get an ROI.
You’ve told us num- number of times that we need to think of our forage piles as a pile of money. And then I think there’s a term that we’ve talked about on this platform as well of think of shrink as the interest you pay on that money. Larry, I’m gonna throw it to you for your take here starting the episode, but I hate paying interest on money. So I’ll let you kinda take it from here as far as your thoughts on that.
Dr. Larry Roth: Wow. Fantastic, Scott. Yep. So we think of shrink could be the interest that we’re paying. Could be just lost feed, lost opportunity. Asset is gone. We could look at a 20,000 bunker, 20,000-ton bunker that would be worth, what? $1.2 million? And if we had $1.2 million out there i- in dollar bills we would at least put a rock on it so it doesn’t blow away in the wind. We’d at least put some metal over it so it doesn’t get wet when it rains. Scott, what are we doing to protect that asset so that we don’t lose it? And there’s so many places to go there. As you were doing the prelude here, I was thinking our corn silage asset really begins with the soil.
Scott Zehr: Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth: What’s the fertility? What’s the conditions when we plant and right afterwards? Do we get a lot of rain on it? Do we not get rain? All of these things that come into affecting corn silage quality. And then we have to think about our plant genetics. Our plant genetics for making corn silage are so vastly improved compared to even 20 years ago.
So temptation becomes I’ll save some money on that seed corn because it’s just for silage. Again, if we’re thinking about our $1.2 million bunker, do we really wanna skimp on seed corn to make…
Scott Zehr: Yeah
Dr. Larry Roth: So a- again, there, there’s so many different things that come into play, and I know that diesel is higher priced right now, and so we might be tempted we’ll just kinda open up the rollers a little bit.
Then we don’t process our corn. And then that corn is gonna show up when we wash out the parlor. It’s gonna show up in lower milk production, or having to do things differently with the diet. We think of the price of diesel, and we think of packing. You only get one chance to pack that pile. And that may be one of the biggest factors. Note I said one of, one of the biggest factors for determining what our shrink is gonna be.
How good a job did we do at packing so that we exclude the oxygen so the yeast don’t grow and the plant doesn’t continue through metabolism? We could think about our plastic that we’re gonna put over. Oh, man, if we could just use a little bit qu- lower quality plastic, that shouldn’t hurt us too bad, should it?
All of these different things that come into play, but it has to begin with the mindset that corn silage is an asset. And that asset is going to affect the cows. It’s going to affect the cows potentially from a longevity standpoint, production standpoint, repro standpoint. All of these things come into play.
So it’s hard to say here’s one thing that we should be doing to protect our asset, when there are so many different factors.
Scott Zehr: Yeah, i- it’s
Dr. Larry Roth: But Scott let’s just start by thinking about corn silage as an asset.
Scott Zehr: I think so. And, I would almost use the example, right? So throughout the last 20 years in dairy, I spent a lot of time on the cow side of stuff, whether it was actually actively on the dairy or in genetics. And boy, the heifer calves were the most sought after asset, rightly right?
And for a number of years, Larry, bull calves were… They were the money that helped put groceries on the table or gas in the truck for the week or maybe pay a few small bills.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yep.
Scott Zehr: And then black hidden calves ca- came around and for a while they were treated like a, a little bit more, maybe opportunity than a Holstein bull calf, but now all of a sudden markets have shifted.
Things have happened on the beef side. These calves are now an extremely valuable asset. and so we’ve had to… There’s been a shift in viewing how we view these day-old calves, especially if they’re black hided, into a really an asset that we can capitalize on.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yeah.
Scott Zehr: Larry, I drive down the road time and time again, and I know farms that view those black calves as this premium two-day-old asset. And I see a bunker that’s not covered from 2025 corn silage.
So I think it is fair to really challenge the listener today to be thinking about this as an asset. And inherently, Larry, I think every dairyman out there or anybody that grows corn to then feed the cattle knows they’re working with an asset. But why do we still see such mismanagement?
Dr. Larry Roth: You bet. I think it is a matter of understanding how this asset affects other assets. So you talked about black-hided calves. If we don’t do a good job with our corn silage, we may not have as many black-hided calves. We don’t do a good job with our corn silage, I would contend that it could affect the health and wellbeing of those black-hided calves.
Scott Zehr: We certainly can.
Dr. Larry Roth: So, corn silage is at the center of so much that we’ve got going on. If we’ve got a dairy that is also maybe raising some soybeans from a cash crop standpoint, if we can reduce the shrink, improve the quality of our corn silage, do we need to put up as much corn silage? Can some of those acres, a land asset, can that go into raising a cash crop such as soybeans?
So, let change our mindset to where corn silage is an asset that we have to manage because it affects so many other assets on the dairy.
Scott Zehr: Yeah. I think my hope today, Larry, through our conversation is that somebody listening to this, maybe a nutritionist listening can say, “Oh I think I have a farm in mind that I’d like to go have a visit with,” or a veterinarian listening in the same manner. And if you’re a dairyman today, I want this conversation to feel like, “Hey, thanks for talking about this, guys, ’cause it makes me feel good, ’cause we’re really checking the box.”
But also if you’re somebody putting up corn silage, I don’t want you to take it like you’re doing a poor job, but look at the opportunity. Just if there’s… Larry there’s just not a lot of opportunity anymore for us to ignore the interest we’re paying from the time we plant the corn to the time we ask the cow to convert it into milk.
Dr. Larry Roth: Absolutely. With margins being thin, we need to get a return from everything that we do with that crop. Again, going back to the land, be it owned land that we paid cash for at some point or still have a mortgage on or rent. It took money to put that crop in the ground, put a fungicide on it, to chop it. So again, it’s that mindset. And Scott, you talked about two different types of individuals, somebody who’s… They’re doing a fantastic job, they’re checking all the boxes, but again, there’s so many moving parts on the dairy. Do we really need to do all of this with our corn silage? Yeah, you do, because if you’re not checking those boxes, it’s going to affect other parts of the operation.
Or the other producer who says, “corn silage it’s just a feed. There’s other things that we need to pay attention to.” Yes, it is a feed, but it is probably the largest fed feed on the dairy. And so we gotta put so much emphasis on corn silage quality, corn silage hygiene, and reducing that corn silage shrink.
So, congratulations if somebody’s checking all of the boxes, keep doing that. If somebody’s not checking all those boxes, let’s think of the implications of not going to the nth degree with our corn silage.
Scott Zehr: Yeah, I have a friend of mine, Larry, he ran a custom harvest business for a long time. And, you’d get a kick out of this guy. But if you asked him his favorite time of year, he would tell you resoundingly, “Oh, chopping corn. Oh, I love chopping. I love everything that goes into chopping corn.”
And this crazy nut, he would sit in a chopper for 26 hours a day if he could. If he could get other people to drive truck and back tractor, he’d do it. He preps for corn silage season, you’d think he… and he’ll tell you that’s his Super Bowl. That’s his Daytona 500. That’s his US Open tennis championship.
That’s his Masters Tournament. Whatever sports analogy you wanna throw out there, the Rose Bowl.
How he approaches it. And when you talk about maybe the individual that, that is, is asking are all these steps necessary? I would ask you this, Larry is getting ready for one of the most important 10, 12-day stretches on your farm that important?
Dr. Larry Roth: Absolutely, you bet. Because it’s gonna impact the entire rest of the year, and it may have impacts even past the rest of the year.
Scott Zehr: I…
Dr. Larry Roth: If we have corn silage hygiene issues, maybe it delays re-breeding on the cows, maybe it has an effect upon calf health from reducing colostrum quantity and quality. We’re starting to understand so much about epigenetics and what affects the calf before it is born.
We think of different types of inflammation, heat stress. Heat stress is really just another inflammation. What’s the impact of these mycotoxins on the developing calf inside the cow? Be it gonna be one of the black-hided calves that you talked about earlier, or be it the high genetic value heifer that’s gonna hopefully stay in the herd for a long time as a lactating cow.
So yeah, corn silage, that is probably the most critical stretch of time on the dairy because of its long-term implications.
Scott Zehr: Yeah. Measuring the success of corn silage season, and there’s a lot of downstream stuff. There’s milk production, there’s cow health, there’s reproduction, all the stuff you just mentioned with the calves, that all plays into it. But I, having spent time as a Dairy Comp 305 geek and mining data and looking at data for a number of years. There’s stuff that I would run into and questions that I would have and I’d ask the producer, “where’s the records on this?”
“We actually don’t keep track of that.” “Okay. If you don’t track it, how can I look at it and give advice on it to know what to improve on, right?”
Dr. Larry Roth: If y- if you’re not tracking it, how can you manage it and improve that particular aspect?
Scott Zehr: Exactly. So when I think of the corn silage, you know, we, we have, I’m just thinking in terms of some of these, the clients that, that we visit. The nutritionist is there once or twice a week, or once a week or maybe every two weeks to do a nutrient analysis, to do some dry matter testing. Are we doing kernel processing scores once throughout the season or twice, not at all, five times, right?
But what is it that- one, like what are the things that we should be tracking? How do we… What are the metrics we should look at in a corn silage pile to help us determine if we’re doing a good job or not?
Dr. Larry Roth: Fan- fantastic question. I think one of the items is if we can weigh corn silage coming in, it’s gonna tell us something about how good a job we did raising the crop through all of the different agronomic and weather challenges. Then I would look at my good old bucket of water trick. You mentioned kernel processing scores.
Those are good. It’s a good quantitative measurement. But by the time we get that kernel processing score, the chopper is probably already onto the next farm, or it’s put back in the shed.
So my little five-gallon bucket of water trick is put a couple handfuls of corn silage, fresh chopped corn silage into a five-gallon bucket, maybe two-thirds, three-quarter full, stir it up with a stick, let it sit for a couple of minutes, pour off the water and the forage, and then look and see what you have for kernels in the bottom, because that’s what’s gonna end up on the parlor floor when you wash it next February or March.
That’s gonna be the starch that doesn’t get utilized by the cow. And then I think I would be sending in corn silage samples, maybe taking a composite by day of chopping, send that in so that we’re able to determine what is the quality, nutritive quality of this crop that we’re producing. I could have tremendous dry matter yields, but if the quality isn’t there, so what?
And then measuring nutritive quality of the crop going into the pile gives me an idea of what nutritive value corn silage we’re gonna have coming out of the pile whenever we start feeding it out. And then that enables the nutritionist or the dairy producer to put together a game plan. Man, we got all the starch in the world, we got excellent fiber digestibility.
We don’t need to do anything to complement or make up for deficiencies in our corn silage. But let’s say, for whatever reason, our corn silage is low in starch, maybe we need to get some more starch from off of the farm. Maybe our fiber digestibility is low, maybe we need some kind of higher fiber digestibility byproduct. So I think that nutritive value of the crop going into the pile is so very critical.
Scott Zehr: I’m gonna, I’m gonna jump in there, Larry, because you brought up something really important that is, what’s the old saying? Time is money, right? So if I harvest corn silage in August, and I’m taking composite samples as we’re chopping, the one thing I- you didn’t bring up is when we’re doing these nutrition analysis, we can also do mycotoxin analysis. W- we’ve talked about that in the past. I’m not dwell on that today.
Dr. Larry Roth: Thank you.
Scott Zehr: But in a lot of cases, certain customers that I work with, clients that I work with in the Northeast here, they’re gonna say “I don’t have any leftover corn silage.” But in, in a lot of cases, Larry, we’re gonna not feed this corn silage till December, January? Some cases February or March, right?
If we’re doing some of this measurement now, and you alluded to it, it’s not even so much about coming up with a game plan, but I think of budgeting. So I think of it like a CEO of a business. What nutrition plan do I have in my pile, and how much money do I need to think about budgeting towards off-farm starch and off-farm protein, throughout the rest of the year? I would rather have that conversation in September than the day I open that bunk in April.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Or after you’ve been into that bunker for a month and we discover we have mycotoxin issues, so thank you for bringing that up. We wanna measure mycotoxins on our fresh corn forage so we know what we’re putting into the pile or the bunker from a mycotoxin standpoint.
But yeah let’s know what we’ve got going into the game. And so I think that’s one of the most critical steps is knowing what our corn silage asset is quality-wise, hygiene-wise, before we have to start feeding it.
Scott Zehr: I, I know you like football analogies, Larry, and there’s probably a number of people on our podcast that do. But going back to that Super Bowl mindset of my friend that preps for corn silage like it’s the Super Bowl. Everything that you just described with looking at this corn silage during harvest, that’s pract- that’s practically like watching game film on the opponent. You know what expect when finally get to the day.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yep. Or watching game film on yourself…
Scott Zehr: Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth: to know what you need to change for next year. We’re into corn silage season, we’re in the middle of it. We may not be able to make some changes this year, but we’re able to start making plans for next year. So I just really think that those fresh corn forage samples are so critical.
I know there’s a lot going on during corn silage season, and we always wanna be safe. But we need to be pulling some samples as we’re building the pile, filling the bunker or filling the silo. How- however we store it, we need to know what our quality and hygiene is going into the feeding period. Feed- feeding for a month and then figuring out what we got is not a winning game plan.
Scott Zehr: No.
Dr. Larry Roth: We need to know in advance.
Scott Zehr: Yeah. Rob Hamacher our VP of market here in at Agrarian Solutions across the US, there, there’s something that he says an awful lot, whether it’s at our staff meetings, I think at one point, or maybe it still is, this little saying was in his email signature, and he truly believes it. Maybe you know where I’m going with this, maybe you don’t. But what he likes to say is, “Teamwork makes the dream work.”
Now, okay, maybe it sounds a little cliché, but it’s true. We don’t do these things on our own. And so I wanna talk about communication for a minute, and ownership of the outcome of this O- ROI, because we’re… this isn’t just the dairyman and his son on a small farm or the dairy and a herdsman and a crop crew and…
We’re talking owners and feeders and crop managers, nutritionists, agronomists, custom harvester, the employees executing the strategy, the vets, the consultants that are watching the data like I used to. That is the team of people that are involved one way or another with this asset. And so talk about the importance of the communication between everybody.
Dr. Larry Roth: It’s funny how different things come to mind, but as you started talking about teamwork, I was thinking of a 2,500 cow dairy that I showed up to buy some calves on the day that one of the brothers was heading out to plant corn. And they were running just a little bit behind because of weather, and his comment was, “I’m gonna go faster today than what we normally do.” Okay. What could go wrong, Scott, with something like that?
We start getting skips. We start not getting corn planted at a good, consistent depth. Yeah, he may get all of those acres planted, but he’s not gonna really know the consequence of that speed up decision until they start chopping and filling the bunker. Then we don’t have as much coming in. Our plants are stressed, so maybe we don’t have the nutritive quality. The plants are stressed early on, so we have more mycotoxin issues.
So comm- communication, teamwork, everybody who has anything to do with that crop understands the importance of their action or responsibility, from the person who orders the corn to the person who puts it in the ground, the person who sprays it for weeds, sprays fungicide, setting the chopper hauling it in, dumping it, not going through the mud and the manure to track it up onto the pile.
All of these things come into play, that we have to understand that each person who has something to do with that crop, that asset, excuse me, determines the success of that asset and how it affects all the other assets on the dairy.
Scott Zehr: That is so widespread. I’m not trying to nauseate the audience with football preferences, but oftentimes American football is talked about as the ul- ultimate team sport with 53 men on each roster. But when you go down through that list of individuals that I just talked about and the scenario you just played out for a 2,500 cow dairy, we’re talking there could be close to 50, 75 different people involved.
And everybody has to understand their role, and it’s discipline. Discipline comes into mind, not in a negative way, but being disciplined in the fundamentals. And it’s always interesting how so many of our conversations, Larry, come back to the fundamentals. And for the people that have been following us along for a while, I used to have a picture that is just rotated on a different wall right now of Vince Lombardi. And, just talking about mastering the fundamentals, and communication is one of those fundamentals, but understanding. Understanding
Dr. Larry Roth: I, I think the biggest fundamental is understanding what our objective is with this asset. Is it as many tons of dry matter? Is it as many tons of starch? Is it as many tons of digestible fiber? Is it as clean of mycotoxins as possible? And it’s not gonna be probably one single objective, but understanding the overall objectives. How is what I do today with this crop influencing the ability of this dairy to accomplish their objectives with this asset?
Scott Zehr: So Larry, as we wrap up today’s show I got a few questions I wanna ask of you, and not necessarily in rapid fire form, but, we’ll go down through a little bit of a list here to leave people something to think about. So question number one, Larry, what are the biggest harvest day decisions that determine whether this asset starts strong or starts compromised?
Dr. Larry Roth: I think, first one is how do we set, number one, the height of the chopper? We’re seeing more in- interest in high chop corn silage. Gonna be higher digestible fiber, higher starch content. I think setting the chopper for destroying kernels so that every kernel is processed. I think also of moisture of the crop, moisture or dry matter, however you wanna look at it, of the crop.
Those are probably the… And then the packing decision. How many pack tractors based upon how much corn silage we have coming in per hour. So are we bringing it in from a long distance away, or is it close-up fields? And then finally, do we have the crew around to cover it and pack it at the end of the day? So how’s that? That’s a whole bunch of decisions.
Scott Zehr: love it and it reminds me of one of your one, one of the, your sayings that I enjoyed the most or have enjoyed the most is letting, reminding people to let the packing tractor determine the speed of the chopper.
Dr. Larry Roth: There you go. Yeah, exactly. That person should have the opportunity to say, “Hey, Mr. Chopper, take a break. You’re getting ahead of me.”
Scott Zehr: Yep. I shared that, Larry, with a dairy farm the one day and we talk about time is money. He goes, “But the guy’s getting paid by the hour to run the chopper.” Ah, as the custom harvester, you’re paying on the cutter bar hour, buddy. Oh yeah, good point. But think about that.
Dr. Larry Roth: So are you paying by the hour or are you paying… I understand what you’re saying, but I bring that back to the quality of crop that we’re creating.
Scott Zehr: Yes, exactly. Exactly.
Dr. Larry Roth: Okay.
Scott Zehr: Okay, next question. I like this one. So what storage mistakes are easy to overlook but expensive later?
Dr. Larry Roth: Oh, I think it’s easy to overlook the packing. What you were just talking about. Man, we are really making progress today. We’re bringing in a tremendous number of corn silage tons, but we’re getting ahead of the packer. I think another decision that is easy to overlook is the slopes on the pile, or even with the bunker. Because we gotta get everything packed, and if we get too steep we’re not gonna be able to pack like what we should, ’cause we don’t wanna roll the pack tractor.
So I think, again, it’s easy to overlook what is the rate of corn silage coming in and in relation to the pack tractor or tractors, and then the slope of our pile or bunker.
Scott Zehr: I’m gonna add in a bonus one that I observe too many times, and that is they’re predicting rain for the next two days and we decide to not cover the pile in between the stoppage. It’s a pain in the butt. It takes people, it takes energy, it takes time. But Larry, that pile is money, and that rain is washing pennies right drain.
Dr. Larry Roth: And you know what, Scott? Every day that you’re feeding out of that bunker, you’re going to see that spot where you didn’t cover. And it’s gonna remind you that decision was made back on August 28th not to cover. ‘Cause that line is gonna be there all through that pile or that bunker.
Scott Zehr: Yep. I was on a dairy in another state, I think it was up in Maine, looking at this bunker, and this was six months after they started feeding the pile, Larry. And I… “Oh, right there is where you guys took a break for a week during the rain that you talked about. It’s there.”
Dr. Larry Roth: Yep. Absolutely.
Scott Zehr: the dairyman just kinda hung his head. The weather’s the weather, but control you can control. You can control whether we make the decision to go out and cover it.
Dr. Larry Roth: Absolutely.
Scott Zehr: When corn silage starts feeding poorly, what’s the first thing that pops into your mind?
Dr. Larry Roth: When you say it starts feeding poorly, I’m gonna take that as meaning production goes down. We could also say repro goes down. So, first thing that is gonna go through my mind is, how did we do with those kernels, destroying them? And then secondly, near and dear to my heart, mycotoxin contamination. So is the energy th- there? Is the energy available? And then do we have a hygiene issue?
Scott Zehr: Yep I would agree. And like you did initially with milk and repro, just the way my pegboard works in my head, I like to chase that all the way down through because there’s such a long list of cascading events that happen. It’s not just the three, four pounds of milk today. It’s not just the five points of conception rate over the next 60 days.
It’s elongated days in milk. It’s higher body condition score at calving. It’s compromised calvings. It’s transition health. It’s another lactation. I could go on, but we all know the kind of the downstream there. We talked about this a little bit, but I, about what we’re measuring with that pile, the dry matter, the starch, the fiber digestibility, the mycotoxins that, that, you know when we’re harvesting. But how do we connect that forage analysis to actual cow response instead of treating the lab report like the finish line?
Dr. Larry Roth: Okay. I will add one more to what you just said, ash content.
Scott Zehr: Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth: If our ash content is high, it may be telling us something about tracking dirt onto the pile. So your question is, are we just trying to make a good lab report? The lab report is on the corn forage. It doesn’t tell us how the fermentation process went. It doesn’t tell us how good a job of packing we did. Oh, we did a horrible job of packing, so now our, we got some heating, prolonged fermentation, so our sugar content is gonna be lower. Our pH aren’t gonna be low, and our heat damage protein is gonna be higher. So it isn’t just the lab report on the corn forage. The final check is gonna be those assays as we feed out the asset.
Scott Zehr: Yeah. And then, ironically as you were talking, you say the final check, but really then there’s the cow and the story she’s gonna tell. There’s another final check. And, you know, it makes me realize corn silage season when you drive around during corn silage season, and it’s, it feels like a rat race if you’re in a concentrated dairy community like I am.
There’s choppers flying through the fields. There’s trucks going down the road both ways. There’s corn silage flying off the trucks in the air. Litter on the side of the road, right? And it’s, it feels like a rat race. But really what it is the most intense relay race- Yeah … out there because…
and I think that’s how we have to think of it as a relay race, because there’s so many different start-finish lines in the same journey.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yeah.
Scott Zehr: There’s so many points where the baton has to be handed off cleanly to make this thing all come together.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yes.
Scott Zehr: And, I think one other question I wanna touch on is back to communication. Now I’m reminded of a friend of ours named Joel, Larry, and Joel used to like to say, “You cannot over-communicate.” And so just wrap us up with, again, there’s a lot of people involved in this relay race.
In your mind, the perfect scenario, maybe going back to that 2,500 cow dairy you referenced, what’s the value in sitting everybody down for an afternoon with coffee and donuts or pizza and wings and just hammering out the game plan? “We- we’ve been putting up corn Larry, on this farm with the same people for 10 years. Everybody knows what they’re doing,” could be the worst thing you’ve ever said.
Dr. Larry Roth: So let’s say we ran into a situation like that. I don’t need to go in to listen to any meeting about how to do corn silage. I’ve been doing this for 50 years. Okay? Let’s bring in some of our corn silage nutrient assay reports from this year. Let’s review those, what’s good about them, what’s not good about them.
Let’s go over what our current crop is this year, what our chopping plan is. We’re gonna start on August 28th with those fields far away, and then finish with those close up. What changes do we need to make during that time? What changes do we need to make as the crop matures and gets drier? What do we need to do if it’s gonna start to rain?
So go through all of these different situations to remind us of our, how we’ve done in the past, what our challenges are, and again, come back to what our objective, what our grand objectives are with this asset
Scott Zehr: I like that. ‘Cause that’s really I like it when you bring it back to what’s the objective? What are we trying to accomplish? Larry, I’m gonna leave the listeners with one final thought on my end, and I’ll leave the door open for you to do the same. This is a crazy time of year that we’re coming into for people that are harvesting corn.
Whether it’s silage, whether it’s grain corn, high moisture, it’s crazy. We tend to not get enough sleep. Be safe. Be mindful when you’re around the bunks. If you’re out there taking samples, there’s tractors, they can’t see everywhere. To the truck drivers, remember those stop signs are there for a reason.
Other cars in the public, they may not feel the need to come to a full stop, but just be safe ’cause it’s… every year, Larry, it seems like in, in the area that I live within a 60, 70-mile radius there’s some horror stories that just don’t need to happen. But I understand it’s a stressful time of year, but safety first, guys. Safety first.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yeah. Yeah, no, I think that’s a great one. So what, we put up a tremendous crop, we did a tremendous job of packing, but we lost a guy. We lost a guy for any of the different reasons that you just talked about, be it traffic related, be it rolling a tractor, be it getting run over there while we’re out sampling. We gotta be safe. That- that’s number one. The other thing is communicate to the team the objective with this asset and why it is so important to this business enterprise.
Scott Zehr: There is a lot of meat on that bone, Larry, that we could take a lot of different ways from cow health right down to the paychecks of the people that are scraping manure, and that really great thing to leave people with. I thank you for that, yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth: Yeah
Scott Zehr: So well, folks, if you found value in today’s podcast, share it with a friend. Hit that share button, send it to them. If you have any questions or you’d like to talk about anything with Larry or I about what we discussed today, that is [email protected]. And Larry, we do get back to our listeners when they email us. So with that, Larry, thank you for taking time out of your day today to visit with us again. Great conversation, appreciated that, and we’ll be talking to everybody again soon.
Dr. Larry Roth: All right. Thank you, Scott.
