Feed & Nutrition

One of my fond childhood memories is of my dad placing me on Nina’s back as she walked into the barn to be milked. Nina was truly a great cow by all accounts – highly productive, great conformation and highly prolific thanks to my dad’s forays into embryo transfer (ET) work in the early ’80s.

As feed prices continue to rise, dairy farmers face increased difficulties in providing their herds with nutritious, cost-effective food. A possible remedy for this situation is shredlage, a new way for harvesting and processing corn.

As spring is on the horizon and you draft the next cropping rotation, are you considering what the cows need? We often focus on growing crops to maximize tonnage, and we figure out how to deal with the feed once it is in the bunk. A better approach is to step back, look at what the cows need, and focus on growing forage to meet those needs.

Record high fertilizer prices this winter have driven a lot of creative thinking about cost-cutting strategies for 2022. Dairy farmers are at an advantage as manure is a tremendous source of all essential nutrients, and typical rotations of corn and alfalfa/grass result in nutrient and other benefits for corn following sod.

Up until the 1990s, estimating how much a field yielded in forage crops like corn silage and alfalfa required the use of a weigh wagon, truck, or farm scale.

LOW DIET ACCURACY DECREASES PROFITABILITY

High feed prices and volatility due to market and supply chain disruptions caused by the COVID pandemic are restating the importance of maximizing feed use efficiency.