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The Only Thing Dry Is The Corn Silage
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| by: Tyler Melroe, County Extension Agent |
October 28, 2009 |
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It's easy to look in a book and read about the right way to do things. Obviously Mother Nature has never read the book. This year when things got wet, the corn silage got dry. So what can we do to deal with this and is your corn silage salvageable?
We are hearing a lot of reports of silage from 45-55 percent moisture (ideally we would try to harvest it between 60 and 70 percent moisture). Typically as the maturity of the plant increases and the moisture content of the corn silage drops we can expect an increase of field losses and the dropping of some ears and leaves.
A research project at South Dakota State University compared harvesting corn silage on two different dates, September 24 (68-58 percent moisture) and November 4 (less than 58 percent moisture). While this study quantified the drawbacks of the late harvest date, it did also recognize some benefits to high dry matter corn silage.
The most obvious drawbacks are field losses and reduced fermentation when the corn silage is harvested at the later date. The concentration of important by-products from the fermentation process is reduced in dry silage and consequently a reduction in the digestibility of the feed and in particular the protein is observed.
Fortunately, there appears to be a couple benefits to feeding the drier silage. Even though the digestibility is reduced, when fed to dairy cows there was an increase in dry matter intake and in some cases an increase in milk production.
Even with the increase in consumption and production, it is still not ideal to harvest silage at the later date. When we factor in the yield loss and reduced fermentation, we still want to target 30 ? 40% moisture corn silage. Yet, as we are forced into this late harvest date realize there is still merit to putting up and feeding drier silage.
Most producers still utilize corn silage as a component of their beef cow wintering ration and depend on it. So how do you manage this dry silage?
1) It is critically important to have it packed well. With the lower moisture content there is the increased likelihood of having greater oxygen penetration and an increased potential for spoilage. Do not feed moldy, spoiled silage.
2) The potential exists to adding water back to dry silage as it is packed. However, this does take a significant amount of water. It is recommended that 5 gallons are added to every ton for every 1% increase in moisture. So, if you wanted to move 1 ton of 55% moisture silage to 60% moisture, it would require 25 gallons of water.
The bottom line is that even though the scenario for feed this year is less than ideal, there is still feed value in the late harvested corn silage.
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©Marshall County Journal 2010
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