In this episode of Ruminate This, we discuss simple, no-nonsense strategies to set up your silage season for success and stop costly feed losses before they start. Agrarian Solutions’ Vice President of Nutrition, Larry Roth, Ph.D., PAS, shares expert tips on reducing corn silage shrink, improving fermentation, and protecting forage quality from harvest to feedout.
From hitting the perfect harvest window and cracking every kernel to packing, covering, and sampling like a pro, this episode is full of practical advice to help you feed more, waste less, and maximize your dairy’s bottom line.
🎧 Listen now to set your herd up for lifelong success!
Scott Zehr
Hey, welcome everybody to another edition of Ruminate This with Agrarian Solutions. I’m your host, Scott Zehr. And today we are going to be talking with Dr. Larry Roth from Agrarian, our Vice President of nutrition.
And almost kind of continuing the series that we started when it came to haylage season, if you would. And we’re gonna be talking about one of the most stressful seasons of the year, Larry. And when I think of stressful seasons, I think of winter ’cause I get sick of the cold, but when you have to put on your dairyman’s hat, and for a lot of intents and purposes our friends in the row crop business and combining but we’re gonna spend our time talking about dairy today. I think of corn silage season as probably one of the most stressful times of year. That I think I’ve ever seen on a dairy farm.
And as I think through that, I mean, there’s just so many opportunities and I don’t wanna sound too pessimistic, but there’s so many opportunities for things to not work out the way we’re hoping to. And ironically enough it wasn’t just a, a little bit ago, we had an incredible thunderstorm a number of nights back that quite honestly, I bet there was a lot of guys really hoping it was just gonna stick to rain and not too high of winds. I don’t know if you remember last year, I think it was last year or two years ago, I sent you pictures of a cornfield that was flat from the wind and that’s just one piece of this stressful time of year.
So Larry kind of walk us through, I know you’ve put together a nice piece and we’ll make this available for people to look at. Kind of like a pre-season checklist.
Dr. Larry Roth
Yeah.
Scott Zehr
Of all the things we need to think about and try to execute on. And starting with that, addresses one of those stress points, which is mother nature.
Dr. Larry Roth
You bet, you know when we think about corn silage, it’s probably the single most important ingredient in the cow’s diet. We think about the dollar investment in corn silage. If we have a bunker full of corn silage, really it’s a bunker full of dollar bills. We gotta think about it that way.
And what can we do to save as many of those dollar bills as possible? Because anything we do that helps to save those corn silage dollar bills translates into more milk. It, it’s the same thing. Corn silage quality, reducing corn silage shrinkage, there two sides of the same coin.
So I think that Scott, if we have a checklist as we come into corn silage season, it enables us to do a better job of management. And I think that if we’re prepared with that checklist, they can actually reduce the stress levels that you were referring to. So, when I think of corn silage, the first thing we have to consider is plant health.
What do I mean by plant health? Do we have healthy plants? Are these plants growing? Are they making starch in the kernel? Are they making sugar in the stem? And so we start to think, what could lower plant health? First thing that comes to my mind when you started talking about that thunderstorm was hail.
Scott Zehr
Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth
Hail is going to damage the leaves. It’s going to damage the stem, and that is going to enable different bacteria and moles to enter into the plant. The plant in essence has an immune system. Just says, you and I have an immune system, and cows have an immune system. Plants the same way.
So anything that challenges that plant’s immune system, causes it to have to repair itself. It’s just like with the cows, the plant has to reallocate nutrients. No longer is it making sugar in the stem that gets translated into starch in the kernel. Plus you’ve got that risk of different molds growing that can lead to mycotoxins. And then we start thinking about insects.
Insects is just like with hail, weakens the plants health reallocation of nutrients. Think of the plant, the corn plant, Scott, is just a great big sugar plant. That’s what it’s supposed to do. It’s supposed to take water, carbon dioxide, sunlight, and make sugar. Some of the sugar stays with sugar. Some of it gets converted to starch.
We think of diseases that come on and one of the biggest diseases, or at least it gets the most stress lately, has been tar spots. Well, tar spot in and of itself does not cause mycotoxins, but it weakens the plant, causes it to dry down too fast. And we’ll talk about this some more with some other objects that comes up.
But again, think of anything that lessens plant health, tips the balance away from sugar and starch. Tips the balance toward drying down too fast. We think of drought. With drought the plant’s just trying to stay alive. Typically, we’ll see maybe a little bit higher sugar content, but that sugar isn’t getting converted over into starch.
If we think of too much rain, that’s conducive to the molds. It’s conducive to molds that come on to produce not only mycotoxins, but lessen plant health. And then when we look at the individual plants, we want the plant to be drying down from the bottom up. That’s the natural maturing process of the plant.
The bottom leaves start to dry up first, but if we have a plant that’s drying down from the top down, then we don’t have as much photosynthesis taking place. We don’t have as much sugar. We’re not gonna have the starch, the plant dries down too fast. And then that leads to issues with packing, which we’ll talk about later on. So, plant health is so key.
Scott Zehr
And Larry, you know, when I was on the dairy, all the things that you just talked about, I don’t think we ever really sat and thought about them in the way you described them, but it’s almost overwhelming to listen to. But it, it’s, it’s exactly right. And there can be a cumulative effect of, you know, it’s not just that.
Dr. Larry Roth
Absolutely.
Scott Zehr
We had hail damage. I mean, oftentimes you see hail damage, you were gonna see probably increased insect damage and…
Dr. Larry Roth
Absolutely.
Scott Zehr
The whole nine yards and…
Dr. Larry Roth
Absolutely.
Scott Zehr
You know, so outside of the stress of unpredictable weather, the number one question, when do I chop? Right? I wanna make sure that we, you know, I, let’s say I have two, three plus thousand acres of corn to chop and I’ve done my best to vary my hybrids. I got some shorter day. I got some longer days to try to combat the fact that it takes three weeks. But at the end of the day, we have to be realistic. We’re probably not gonna get every stock chopped at the perfect moisture content, the perfect…
Dr. Larry Roth
Right.
Scott Zehr
You know start where the, where we want the starch line and all that, or milk line. How do we just kind of, I mean, do you just shoot for the middle or how do we determine when we actually wanna go?
Dr. Larry Roth
Fantastic question. When do we start chopping? Well, number one, I like your idea there of aving a different hybrids so that we can vary when our different fields are going to mature. So we have hybrid maturing, we have different field differences. If I have to air, I’m gonna air on the side of being a little bit too wet.
I didn’t say a whole lot too wet. A little bit too wet. Because the biggest challenge that comes when corn silage gets too dry is getting it packed right. The plant material changes, it’s too dry. We gotta shorten our chop length. We need more pack weight. So, let’s go a little bit on the wet side.
Ideally, our corn silage coming out of the field, let’s shoot for something in that 32 to 35 dry matter. It’s always going to be wetter coming outta storage and going in, and we’ll talk about that later. But. I would rather be chopping at a 28 to 30 than I would at 38 to 40 dry matter.
Scott Zehr
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth
‘Cause the drier the plant is, Yeah, challenges in getting it to pack. But also the drier the plant, the less sugar we’re gonna have. And we need the sugar to be metabolized by beneficial bacteria to make lactic acid to drop the pH. So, if we can shoot for somewhere, if we think of moisture 68 to 72, turn that around, that’s gonna be like a 28 to 32 dry matter.
‘Cause the only thing that happens, Scott, is those plants get drier and drier. They don’t get wetter. It seems that so often once we hit corn silage, either it gets really hot and the wind blows and it dries down in a hurry or beget the big thunderstorm like you were talking about, and we’re out of the field and the plants are drying down even though there’s lots of moisture there, the plants are maturing and drying down.
So let’s air on the side of being a little bit too wet. And then when we start talking about starch content, these plants today differ a little bit in that we got some more of the stay green genetics that’s gonna help the plant to stay a little bit wetter, keep a little bit more of the sugar content than old genetics where they tended to dry down really fast. And that that works to our favor.
So if we’re too early, let’s say a 22 dry matter, we don’t have any starts there. If we’re too dry, let’s say a 40 to 45 dry matter, we’re gonna have a more difficult time getting the silage to pack.
Scott Zehr
There’s a lot of challenges that come with that, that we can talk about a little bit later in this episode too. You know, I don’t wanna say we’re getting the cart in front of the horse ’cause you know, there’s some other things to consider here too. But, as people in dairy, like you said, like this corn silage crop represents a lot of dollars on the farm. We’re always hoping for a good crop.
But one of the things that I think we’ve seen in the past, and I’ve certainly seen it firsthand, we have this great big bumper crop. And oh boy, we really should have put some more bunk space in this last year, ’cause last year we had this same problem, but we didn’t do it, ’cause we don’t normally get this kind of crop.
But interestingly enough, I mean, if you look at the trend, and I saw this on our FDTV not that long ago. And they were talking about grain crop. But I think it goes along with probably some relation to corn silage, yields are increasing every year. We’re getting better at growing corn. The hybrids are getting better. The strategies around corn genetics are getting better. We’re making more corn off of less acres every year.
What are some of the challenges that can arise when we do have these bumper crops, but we maybe don’t have the correct storage structures or enough?
Dr. Larry Roth
Yeah. You know, Scott, I’ve been to a lot of dairies and I don’t know as that I’ve been to a dairy that had all of the storage space that really they needed. Okay, because we keep adding cows, cows eat more. We need to go get more corn silage, but we’re set with that footprint for our bunkers, our drive over piles, but we need more forage or we get increased yields as you were referring to.
So if it looks like we’re gonna have a whole lot more tons than what we’ve had in the past, let’s make some plans for it. Let’s increase our packing weight, maybe slow down a little bit, and how fast we’re chopping to do a better job of getting it packed.
Let’s use this an example. We will use maybe 15 pounds of dry matter per cubic foot as where we need to be as a minimum for packing density. So Scott, what if we had the same footprint for our drive over pile for our bunkers, the walls didn’t get any taller, but what if we went from a packing density of 15 to a packing density of 18 or 20? Pounds of dry matter per cubic foot.
Scott Zehr
Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth
Well, 15 to 20 if my math…
Scott Zehr
Doesn’t sound like a lot, but…
Dr. Larry Roth
Well…
Scott Zehr
It’s a lot.
Dr. Larry Roth
We, we’ve increased it by a third.
Scott Zehr
Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth
Okay. And, and how are we gonna do that? Greater packing density by more pack weight. Slow things down a little bit out there in the field. So have an idea what we’ve got. Change our packing density or maybe we need to do something. Get some bags, do something that compliments if we’re in tower silos or in a bunker or drive over pile, we need to do something.
The challenge I see that happens so often is if we’re in bonkers or drive over piles and now we got a lot more feed, what are we gonna do? We’re gonna go higher. Okay? And then we end up with two steeple walls. And that poses challenges, number one, from a safety standpoint, we don’t wanna roll over tractors.
And if we’re drive over pile we need to be able to go every which direction over the pile. But if we get too high, we just keep going the same way on the top, we get steep slopes, and not only is that a safety issue, if we’re not packing the sides, we’re going to get more yeast and molds, we’re gonna lose dry matter on the sides.
So we wanna save every pound of corn silage that we can. And I think one of the best places for that is packing density. So have an idea of what we got for yields. Make a plan. Maybe we need to. I hate to say it makes some dirt that we can pack on. We’d like to be on asphalt or concrete, maybe for this year we need to do something different or look at bags.
But let’s have a plan in place. That having a plan in place reduces the stress that you were referring to at the beginning of our call.
Scott Zehr
Well, Larry, I like that you said maybe slow down a little bit. And try to get to 18 or 20 pounds of dry matter for cubic foot. But that raises a very big problem. And now have you ever ran one of these big choppers in chopped corn? So I haven’t, but I have chopped corn in a pull type tractor. Now, granted, I grew up on an 80 cow dairy. The guy running the chopper usually is chopping like his butt is on fire.
Dr. Larry Roth
Yeah.
Scott Zehr
And he is usually screaming at the trucks to hurry up and get back here.
Dr. Larry Roth
Yeah.
Scott Zehr
And oh, by the way, we’re trying to break last year’s record of getting corn done in 18 days this year instead of 20 days last year.
Dr. Larry Roth
Yeah. Alright. So Scott, to me it all comes back to what is the objective?
Scott Zehr
Yes.
Dr. Larry Roth
Is it to get corn silage done as soon as we can, which is a laudable goal? Or is it to get as many tons out of the silo, the bunker, the dry over pile as what we can?
I think the goal is to get as much corn silage out as we can, reduce our shrinkage, improve our quality. And so my perspective on that is the person who should be calling the shots is the person driving the lead pack tractor or the person who’s at the silo.
“Hey, you’re getting ahead of me. Take a break. I’ve gotta get this all packed the right way.” Because our goal isn’t to get finished in record time. Our goal is to get record amount of corn silage out of the pile to have as high quality as possible.
Scott Zehr
I might have to, you know, just have you jump on a couple of conference calls with me with some dairy farmers I know that might need to hear that message. Luckily they’re friends of mine, so I think I can say that. No, I mean, good stuff. We talked about it in the haylage thing, right? The guy at the pile should be running the shots as to how much corn can come in. Right?
So speaking of the pile and not to disparage between egg bags and upright silos and piles. At this point we have more bunks if you would, or drive over piles than we do the other storage types. So, slopes. You mentioned the steep slopes on the big piles that, you know, we used to see a lot of back in the day, we used to see some 30, 40 foot high piles.
I can remember seeing neighbors like that. It’s kind of scary. But when we’re packing, right? We wanna keep the tractors on the pile, obviously, but what’s a good rule of thumb for how much we should be putting down at a time? And what slopes are we shooting for?
Dr. Larry Roth
Okay, let’s start with the slope question first. One foot a rise for three foot a run.
Scott Zehr
Yep.
Dr. Larry Roth
Okay? We wanna be safe. And it may seem like, well, that’s gonna make things awful flat. We wanna be able to go every which direction we can with the pack tractor over the drywall pile. If we’re in a bunker, we wanna get near the edges of the wall, but we don’t want to tip the tractor over.
So I kinda like that one foot a rise to three foot of run. And if we’re wanting to get our silage packed as tightly as possible, there’s a kind of rough rule of thumb, 800 pounds packing weight times the tons coming in per hour. Okay? So, if we’ve got 300 ton coming in, we’re going to need what? 240,000 pounds of packing weight. So that’s gonna be a lot of weight.
And if we start thinking about the tractors that we use, so often we’ve reduced the weight, we’ve put duals on because we’re trying to avoid soil compaction. Everything we’re trying to do in the field to reduce soil compaction, we wanna do the opposite on the silage pile.
Put fluid in the tires. Take the duals off. Yeah, I know we’re not gonna be packing as much square foot on a run, but we’re gonna have more weight per square inch or per square foot. Maybe we put some of these blocks on the back, on the three point lift to add some weight. I’ve seen some attachments that are based off of railroad car wheels, and then they put the concrete mafia blocks on top of that to add weight.
So whatever we can do to get weight on the pile. And then you mentioned something important earlier, keep the pack tractors on the pile. While they’re on the pile, they’re causing packing. When they get off of the pile, they’re probably getting into the dirt and tracking dirt up there on the pile. And then we get clostridia, we get bad things happening.
So keep the pack tractors on the pile. The slope is important for safety, number one. It’s important for getting a good pack so that we don’t get yeast and molds growing and causing a loss of silage dry matter and quality. But also help to get rainfall going off. And, we’ll talk about plastic later on.
But you were talking about 30 to 40 foot high bunkers and piles. We need to be thinking about how are we gonna face this silage? How are we gonna get it out?
Scott Zehr
Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth
So we need to think about our equipment. We don’t wanna go higher than what our facer is going to be, or if we’re coming at it from the side with the front end loader, we don’t wanna cause the silage to pave down on the tractor. So we’re always thinking about safety.
And then when we design piles and bunkers, our goal should be to remove like six to 12 inches linear inches per day. So how many cows do we have? What’s the general silage per pounds per cow per day? Then we’ve probably got some young stock to feed as well. But how much corn silage are we gonna take off per day?
That’s where some of these, all of these calculations come into play. Because I, I see sometimes what happens is we get too high of bunkers, too high of piles, and we’re not taking off enough inches a day. And so we’re thinking about our enemy, the yeast and molds. That’s one of our biggest enemies, and they like that face to be exposed.
We lose sugar, we lose starch. We have heating that takes place. So great, we put a lot of sugar and starch in the pile, but now the yeast and moles are taking it away from us. So a lot of things that come into play. It sounds stressful, but we got a plan in place, all of this comes along a whole lot easier.
Scott Zehr
So yeah, having a plan in place. That’s, I think, could be the overarching theme on how to de-stress corn silage season. You know, one of those things that fall under that of having a plan in place, I think I shared this with you in a phone conversation not long after I saw it, but I was on a dairy up in New England last year.
And they had some rain challenges throughout the year, throughout the harvest season, I should say. And so they had to take a break and then they went back to chopping. They went, take a break and, and you could see the lines in the pile. If anybody that’s looked at a bunker pile knows what I’m talking about. It’s that start and stop line of, maybe you sat for four or five days till fields dried out.
Should we be covering that pile if we know we’re gonna have a break for more than say, 24-48 hours? And again, it’s a lot of extra work. You gotta cover it, then you gotta take the cover back off to keep filling. What are some plans to put in place for combating that?
Dr. Larry Roth
Great item to talk about. So, Scott, sometimes when we look at silage faces, it’s like a geologist looking at sedimentary rocks. We look at it and we get an idea of how this silage pile or bunker was filled. We see those brown lines in there.
That’s when we had a weather stoppage, equipment stoppage, whatever. And that top layer was exposed to the oxygen yeast and molds had their way. We had heating that took place. We lost our sugar, our starch, and then we got that yeast and mold that we’re gonna put in the cows when we come through that.
So, I know it’s easy for me to sit here and say cover, if you’re gonna have, I’m gonna say much more than a 48 hour break. You’re gonna have much more than a 48 hour break, you ought to get out there and cover. I know that’s a hassle and so forth. But it’s gonna pay for itself again with more sugar and starch coming out of the pile, more dry matter coming out of the pile and less of, should we say, a better quality corn silage hygiene for what we’re feeding.
So I’m gonna say 36 to 48 hours being kind of that breaking point between do we need to cover or just leave it be. But one of the things that can help us in that situation is to do some extra packing.
Typically we think we don’t really wanna put on more than six inches of silage to a layer at a time when we’re packing. But then pack that last layer a tremendous amount. And if we’ve been doing a good job as we go along, that final packing is only gonna be focused on that last six inches. We’re really not gonna impact what’s down below.
But, if we have the idea, Hey, I’ve done enough packing, you probably need to do some more. And I know diesel costs money, labor costs money, and we gotta pay somebody to be in that pack tractor doing that extra packing, but it’s gonna pay off.
Again, I know I keep repeating myself. Sugar and starch coming out, better quality corn hygiene that we’re putting into the cows. So, I’d like to see if we’re gonna be exposed more than 36, 48 hours we cover, and then do some extra packing to help compensate.
Scott Zehr
Yeah. And I know I’m, I’m not sure if this is countrywide, but you know, I think when I look at bunks here in the northeast we’re not able to use whole tires up here anymore per DC. So we’re using the, the cut side walls and the holes and the drainage. Which is all, which is all good stuff.
But how covered should a pile be with tires? Should they all be touching all the way across or can we kind of cheat a little bit? Maybe we don’t have quite enough. Or maybe, you know, X, Y, Z happens. What’s a good rule of thumb on tire coverage?
Dr. Larry Roth
I’m gonna back up and let’s talk about the plastic. Oxygen limiting plastic. I know that costs more money. Okay? I know there’s a hassle putting it on. But again, I keep coming back to our objective is as much sugar and starch coming out of the pile as possible, as high quality corn silage hygiene as what we can get.
So I like to see that oxygen limiting plastic. And then for tires, the tires should be touching, the tire should be touching. Again, I know, costs money. I know it’s a hassle. But again, what’s our objective? Our objective is to get as much sugar and starch out of the pile as what we can. It’s to preserve that top layer.
Hey, we did an excellent job making that pile or bunker. But then when we got to that last little bit, and Scott, we always finish corn silage at what, 11 o’clock at night? And so, you know what? Let’s wait till tomorrow afternoon and then we’re going to get after covering it. Well, we’ve been putting chores off everything else. We’ll, we’ll wait another day.
And then we get the wind blowing and you know, we gotta be careful with our plastic or we’re gonna go flying off into the next county. But tires are important. Timeliness is important. It takes labor. I know dairy farmers who will make a donation to the local high school football team to get them out there to pitch tires.
I know dairy farmers who use the offer of free food, who use the offer of green money to get people out there. We need people there in a hurry to get things done right. So tires, they need to be touching. If we don’t have the weight, we’ve got opportunities for spoilage to take place, so the timely covering is essential.
And then using tires or soil to seal the edges with our dry roller piles. If it’s a bunker, we ideally would’ve had plastic going down the sides. And again, I know that can be a hassle. We’re wanting to get near the sides and do our packing. But that’s going to be critical to keep the water from coming down and causing spoilage on the sides as well as air coming there. So, plastic, I think is essential. I know it costs money, but high quality plastic is gonna pay for itself.
Scott Zehr
Well, and you’ve used this term before, I guess I’ll rephrase your term a little bit. You know, Larry, if I had a pile of cash in my basement, I probably wouldn’t just leave it out in a plastic bag from, you know, the big box store where if something happened, it would go away really quickly. I’d probably put it in a safe.
I’d wanna keep it covered with something that is gonna keep it around if something happens. And, and that’s really the way to think about your corn pile. It’s a pile of money. Let’s cover it, let’s take care of it. Let’s do everything we can to protect it.
Dr. Larry Roth
Yeah. It’s, it’s not roughage. People think of it as just roughage. And Scott, I’ve got some pictures I can show you that man, they’re a horror show. We’ve got three feet of spoilage on the top and on the sides, but we put up a tremendous amount of corn silage so we could take that loss.
Really, if we had done a better job with that packing, we wouldn’t have had to chop as many acres. We could’ve sold it as corn grain, we could have maybe put it into another cash crop. It’s dollar bills. I don’t like to think of it as roughage. Absolutely. I don’t really like to think of it as forage. We need to think of it as dollar bills.
Scott, if we were raised on the soybeans, and we hired a local trucker to haul soybeans to town for us and Doug gunned it, he forgot to close the bottom doors and he lost 15% of our soybeans getting to town. Would we be happy with that? Not at all.
But I think there’s things that sometimes happen with doing corn silage that can increase our dry matter, or sugar and starch losses, that extra 10 to 15% that we could have easily prevented from happening. So always think of it as corn silage dollars.
Scott Zehr
Just transporting from the field to the bunk. There’s things that we can do with the trucks. I know I’ve seen some of the semis, we’ll have a roof over it with one open size, you’re just chopping in the one side and, and that certainly helps. But, really our big losses, and corn silage come once we ensail it.
Dr. Larry Roth
Absolutely.
Scott Zehr
If we don’t do it right, you know, and…
Dr. Larry Roth
Absolutely.
Scott Zehr
These bunks you talk about and we’ve all seen it, you know, it, it might be 10 inches of spoilage, it might be two feet. But either way, that is a tremendous, I mean, just if, if you put that in context of just keeping it in context of your milk production.
Dr. Larry Roth
Yep.
Scott Zehr
I mean, can you really sit there and tell me, a dairy farmer that says, well, we build in 40% of our milk every day, or let’s just pick a smaller number. 20% of our milk every day goes down the drain, but that’s okay. We’ve built that in. Nobody’s saying that.
Dr. Larry Roth
No, nobody’s saying that. Nobody’s saying that.
Scott Zehr
But we give the corn silage a pass, you know? And I’m not trying to cast a broad net and whatever. But, it’s still out there, right? And I would challenge anybody, you know, if you wanna push back on us on this one, email us [email protected]. Let’s have a conversation and let’s talk about how we can, you know, put more money in the pile.
Dr. Larry Roth
Absolutely. And let’s think of it this way. What are we gonna do with that spoilage? That black icky stuff.
Scott Zehr
Oh, here we go
Dr. Larry Roth
That we got on top. We’re not going to feed that. We’re going to put an employee up there, how many feet in there are they? 20, 30 feet?
Scott Zehr
Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth
And they’re gonna fork it all off, right? Well, number one, we got safety concerns. Number two, we have how many things to do in the dairy? We’re always short on labor. So now we’re gonna put somebody 30 foot in the air and they’re gonna fork off this spoiled silage. And then what are we gonna do with that? Let’s just feed it.
Scott Zehr
Well, we’re gonna spread that back on the field or feed it to the heifers, Larry.
Dr. Larry Roth
Wow.
Scott Zehr
Funny enough, funny enough, I had an opportunity to speak to a group of dairymen in Pennsylvania not that long ago this past spring. And I asked that question to the group. I said, what do you guys do with your moldy forages when you start your piles? Some guy, he was the jokester of the room, which I already had figured out, but he said, I feed it to my heifers. And I said, “would somebody please escort him out of the room? We don’t need him here anymore.”
Dr. Larry Roth
Yeah.
Scott Zehr
But in reality, right? That’s what happens. A lot of times we feed it or maybe we’re raising, we’re raising some beef cattle on the side and it goes to them. Or it gets spread back on the field so we can inoculate that field to have higher mycotoxin yields the next year.
There’s all kinds of things, and I don’t wanna go down that rabbit hole today, but there’s just a whole new set of problems that we’re creating for ourselves that we don’t need to create. Right?
Dr. Larry Roth
Scott, one of my favorite research studies was done by Keith Bolson and one of his grad students, where they fed different levels of that black, icky, yucky stuff with corn silage. And they saw that even 10% of the rash and dry matter being that black stuff totally destroyed diet digestibility. And more, or maybe to me, interestingly, it totally destroyed rumen structure.
When we go into the rumen on these high forage diets, we have liquid at the bottom and then we have a wrapped up there at the top. Even a little bit of that black, icky stuff, totally destroyed that rumen structure and digestibility. So those heifers that we were talking about earlier that we’re hopefully are going to get bred. No. We’re…
Scott Zehr
You mean it doesn’t make them tougher?
Dr. Larry Roth
No, that doesn’t make them tougher. It makes them unproductive. How’s that?
Scott Zehr
Yes. No, I would agree. So I, I mentioned earlier, silage bags, upright storage silos. We still have those around two. The silage bags. I’ve been fortunate enough in my life to put up a lot of these. And I know one of your comments about silage bags more art than science, and I think there’s a lot of truth to that.
But kind of walk us through, for the folks listening that do put up silage bags, we’ll start with those and what are some things we need to think about as we’re putting up a good bag? ‘Cause you can, I’m a firm believer, I’ve seen it. It’s like there’s no middle ground with a silage bag. You either put up a really good bag and you get really good feed or you get a lot of really bad feed.
Dr. Larry Roth
You bet. Yeah. I’ve seen some tremendous feed come out of these plastic bags and I’ve seen some horrible stuff. And I think so often it just comes to just taking the time and considering what it is that we’re doing. If we’re, got somebody who’s doing custom bagging for us, they don’t wanna break cables or anything, so they’re probably not gonna pack it as tight as what it ought to be. That’s the key. Having our packing tractor working uphill is gonna put a little bit more pack in there.
Have a concrete or rock surface. Don’t just put it out on the dirt ’cause then when we go to feed out of it, we’re gonna be feeding out of it right after that three inch rain. Plus, if we’re doing it on dirt, we’re more likely to get the rats and the other rodents and so forth coming around. Control the pests, control the weeds.
We don’t wanna do anything that’s gonna make holes in our bag because again, a hole equals oxygen, equals spoilage. And we wanna be steady as we’re feeling that bag. You can drive down the road and you can see a plastic bag and it looks like the Rocky Mountains in profile all up and down. That’s probably haylage. Corn silage is easier to fill. It’s typically wetter. A more consistent particle size. It’s easier to fill…
Scott Zehr
Nice, smooth bag.
Dr. Larry Roth
Yep. But anytime we got that up and down, that means we’ve got oxygen in there. Losing sugar, losing starch, yeast and moles are having a picnic. So…
Scott Zehr
Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth
Bags have their place. But it’s more art than science and we just gotta take our time and have a plan in place.
Scott Zehr
I like in your checklist, you talk about weed and pest control with the bags. Everybody knows that, man, it’s just a nightmare if you get a rat infestation. And they have the covers you can put on ’em to help with the birds. So one of the hacks that we always did with our bags when I was on the dairy, hydrated lime.
About a, about a three to four inch strip all the way around. We’d refresh it a couple times a year and you know, from my understanding, the rats, they get the hydrated lime on the pads of their feet. They don’t like it. They stay away. We had tremendous results. Really kind of cured the problem actually of having the pest getting in the bag.
You talked about,you know, if you’re bagging yourself, you might tend to pack it a little tighter than maybe the guy that’s the custom bagging. Word to the wise, don’t overpack. I have split a bag before, that causes some issues. Mostly from my perspective was an angry father.
I’m sure there was some less than stellar forage that was at that part of the bag as well.
You know, upright silos, you know, we see a lot of that still in, in parts of the country, different parts of the country. What are some good rules of thumb to think about with the upright silos? I know one of the fears that some of my neighbors around me have that still have uprights, that some of them bring in the custom guys that, you know, they fill the silo in a day.
Great. The corn’s done. It’s a stress off my head. But there’s the fear of tipping it over. There’s, well, are we really gonna be able to get as much in as what we should have? What are some tips there for the uprights?
Dr. Larry Roth
Yeah. You know, we did all this talking about packing density and tractor weights and all that. Well, how are we gonna get that extra packing in our uprights? So…
Scott Zehr
Slow and steady.
Dr. Larry Roth
That’s the biggest thing right there. Slow and steady, and it’s gotta have time to ferment. I’ve seen folks who let that corn silage get too dry, and then what happens is they get a rainstorm in the winter inside because they got all of that heat because we’ve got yeast and molds growing. They’re not taking off enough each day. Plus they had to start feeding it right away.
Ideally, I would wanna have that corn silage bunker made 30 days, preferably 90 days, because the longer it sits there, the more the starch gets available. But if we have to start feeding our corn silage right away, we didn’t have good preservation that took place at the top. The yeast and molds are growing and we’re not taking off enough each day, that yeast to mold continues all of the way down, they’re causing the heating.
I know one farmer that I’d worked with that it was literally a rainstorm in the middle of December because the heating that was taking place, the condensation on the roof. ‘Cause it gets cold here in Minnesota and it was raining inside.
So, uprights have their place. We see a lot of ’em in certain parts of the country. Slow and steady is the biggest thing there. And then can we let that silage, ferment and cure? That’s where the bags can come into play.
We’re gonna feed out this bag while we let our upright ferment. And then maybe we’ve got a bag that we made last year that we’re gonna feed out of this year while we let our silo get ready to be fed out of. So, so many things that we need to consider, but having a plan takes some of the stress away.
Scott Zehr
You know, whether you’re putting corn silage in a bunk, in a bag, or in an upright, one of the biggest things that we have to consider, particle length. Yeah, I’m surprised we haven’t talked about this yet today. But particle length, kernel processing.
You taught me a hack recently and I think we’ll probably talk about it again in this kind of segment here. But, you know, where should we be with part particle length? What are we shooting for? And then let’s talk a little bit about that kernel processor too.
Dr. Larry Roth
Alright, so kernel processing scores, they’re good, but we gotta send the forage off to the lab and then we get the results back. Scott, I’m interested in a real time quality check measurement.
Let’s say we’re using a custom chopper and we want to get a smaller particle length, we want total kernel destruction. Well, that means that that custom chopper can’t go quite as fast. He’s gotta burn more diesel and diesel equals money. So, even if we’re doing our chopping ourselves, we need to be able to do a quality check as we go along.
So you got the Penn State shaker boxes. Consult your nutritionist on this. But generally we like to see about 10 to 15% of the wet corn silage weight being on the top screen because we need some effective fiber coming from our corn silage. But then the biggest thing is we gotta destroy those kernels. We gotta have total kernel destruction.
If we go up to the face of a bunker, always be careful going up to the face of a bunker or a pile, because they can always cave. But let’s just say we went up there. We wanna be looking at the silage and say, wow, you didn’t have any corn in this at all. Because we can’t see the kernels. Total kernel destruction. Because anything that we see on that face is more likely to show up in the manure if we do a manure screen or when we wash the parlor.
So one of the little hacks that I like, I call it a trick because I’m old school, we can call it a hack for today, is as you’re going through the course of the day, maybe 10% of the trucks are wagons. Take about three handfuls of corn forage out of it, throw it into a five gallon bucket of water, stir it up with a stick, let it sit for a minute, and then pour off the water and the plant material. And what do you have for kernels at the bottom?
Because whatever you have for kernels at the bottom of that pale is what’s gonna show up in the manure when you wash the parlor. It’s gonna show up in the manure screen, that starch that we’re not making use of. So great. We did a great job of saving that starch coming out of the pile, but we didn’t destroy the kernel. And that starch isn’t gonna make milk for us, and that’s our objective.
Scott Zehr
Yep.
Dr. Larry Roth
Is to make milk. So destroy the kernels. Yes. We can send the corn silage off and get a kernel processing score, but when does that come? Two to three days later? By that time, the chopper is already gone and we’re not able to make adjustments.
So get about three handfuls from 10 or or so percent of your trucks or wagons. Do the bucket trick, see if we need to adjust our kernel processing.
Scott Zehr
So particle length, you know, we talked, you mentioned like 10 to 15% of the wet corn should be on top. But, from an interest perspective, what are we trying to get there?
Dr. Larry Roth
Generally, depending upon how much corn silage we’re feeding, we’re gonna be somewheres in that three eighths to three quarter inch. And I know that’s a big window, but we’re talking about ranges in our dry matter content. The wetter the corn silage, the longer we can chop it. The dryer it is, the shorter it’s gotta be.
And then also we have the shredlage. That does a very good job of kernel destruction. It chops the plant material so that we get longer, shorter pieces so we get more effective fiber. So I’m gonna give you a big range here of three-eighths inch to three quarter inch, depending upon the type of processor and the moisture content of the forage.
Scott Zehr
So one other thing I want to bring up before we call it a day, something that you and I have talked about on this platform before, and it ties right in with having a plan. So, and this is something that if you guys, listening guys and gail’s listening don’t know, we are very happy to offer some complimentary testing on your forages, your TMR through Dairyland Labs. But testing that corn silage as it’s coming in to storage for mycotoxins.
And I know, Larry, when I talked about this recently with somebody in person, they said, well, Scott, what are you really gonna tell me from a handful of corn silage from this one truck? Folks, I’ve pulled samples off of piles before while they’re packing. And believe me, you make sure you’re communicating with the pack tractor guys and they know you’re there. Wear a vest. Make sure you’re visible if they’re actively packing.
However, if you’re taking proper samples, you can take samples from, say, 10 different spots on that pile today. Put it in the fridge, go back tomorrow, do the same thing again. Put it in the fridge, go back tomorrow, put it in the fridge, take that, mix it all up and give us a sample. Send it in. Larry, what is the value to a dairyman, to a nutritionist to know what mycotoxin levels are coming out of the field and going into storage?
Dr. Larry Roth
Perfect. Scott, I’m gonna expand that a little bit and include nutrient value with that. And again it comes to having a plan. We need to know what our forage inventory is gonna be in terms of mycotoxin issues. “Hey, do we need to go get a quality mycotoxin protection product like DTX concentrate? Or our forage is clean this year?”
Don’t need to worry about that. We would like this forage to ferment for 60 to 90 days to go from being corn forage to corn silage. And maybe during our call we should have differentiated between corn forage and corn silage.
But if I’m waiting 90 days to get my sample and then determine what I’ve got for nutrient value and mycotoxins, now I’m in the middle of, of trying to get this used and I’m not able to make a plan. But if I know, end of August, first part of September, I’m chopping corn silage varies with part of the country. Oh my gosh. We got mycotoxin issues this year. I gotta have a plan in place. Oh my goodness. We don’t have the sugar and starch content this year. I gotta have a plan in place. Our NDFD isn’t very good this year. I gotta have a plan in place. So I’d like to sample again from maybe 10% of the trucks or wagons coming in.
Get a couple of handfuls, do a composite by day, depending upon the size of the dairy. But let’s have those types of analysis so we can put a plan in place instead of waiting until we open up the bunker, open up the pile and then, oh my gosh, what do we have? Now we gotta figure out what are we gonna do for byproducts buying corn grain mycotoxin protection.
So I really strongly encourage people to do testing while they’re chopping and going into storage. And Scott, you said something important I wanna come back to, and that’s safety. Make sure everybody knows that you’re out there grabbing these samples. Okay? ‘Cause we don’t wanna have anybody run over.
And so when we’re in corn silage, it’s a thousand miles an hour. Everybody is going. I like the idea of the vests. I like the idea of using radios to communicate. I like the idea, we know that every so often somebody’s gonna be sampling, be watching for them.
Scott Zehr
It’s the old saying, Larry, pre-planning prevents poor performance.
Dr. Larry Roth
Yeah.
Scott Zehr
And I, I just come back to this idea of sampling going in. You can do it effectively, it can be valuable. And if you’re one of these folks out here, because Larry, you know, think about how we’ve done it for years, if you would, right? We opened the pile. Well, Mr. Nutritionist doesn’t wanna get a sample right off the face ’cause that’s not really representative of what is really gonna be there.
So maybe we feed it out for a couple of days or a week and then we sample that. Well, now the cows are telling us, “Hey, something happened here.” Now we get the results back and we didn’t check for mycotoxins like we maybe should have, ’cause that, that maybe runs a little more expensive. But we got the nutrient analysis back and yeah, it’s not as high starch as we thought it was gonna be.
So then, now we’re scrambling. We’re already behind the eight ball and you know, a month goes by and her checks aren’t going as good. So now we’re gonna test for mycotoxins to see if there’s zearalenone there or what have you. Then we’re gonna talk about maybe putting granddad’s binder in. Let’s move that conversation to the middle of August, not the middle of December.
Dr. Larry Roth
Absolutely.
Scott Zehr
That’s all, that’s all we’re asking folks. Let’s move that conversation to the middle of August, September rather than December and January. And again, I’m gonna put that offer out there to you, [email protected]. Let us help you put that plan in place. And I, I think it comes right back to it, pre-planning prevents poor performance.
Dr. Larry Roth
Scott, if there’s one lesson that I’d like people to walk away from this podcast, have a plan.
Scott Zehr
Yep.
Dr. Larry Roth
Have a plan.
Scott Zehr
Yep. I think this was a very helpful call. Shout out to you, Larry, for putting this together. Our episode that we did earlier this year on haylage is one of the most listened to episodes we’ve ever put out there. And I would expect this to be following suit.
Larry, I’m gonna bring you in another episode to talk about more to do with corn silage. There’s a lot to unpack, a lot of stuff we didn’t talk about today. Inoculates, what do we do? Are they valuable? That kind of thing. So be listening for that episode. And also strategies around starting the bunk. And things we need to consider when we’re actually starting that pile.
So, if you found value in today’s episode, please share with a friend and help us spread the good word here on Ruminate This. Dr. Roth, again, thank you for your time today and we’ll be talking again soon.
Dr. Larry Roth: Alright. Thank you Scott. It was good.
