Just curious.......

I'm neither a farmer nor a rancher, but I greatly enjoy agriculture as an observer. It's one of the things America does best, but it's one of the most under-appreciated (...seldom have so many owed so much to so few...).

To the point, I greatly enjoyed the photos of Billonthefarm's silage operation (as well as his Jurassic Park pens and his happy-looking dog). I would like some education on the matter of the silage itself: is that just regular field corn, or is it a special variety? Does it bear ears, and are they ground up as well? Does it have real nutritional value, or is it just something to hold a cow's ribs apart. Is it planted to be silage, or is the decision to make silage of it one that is made during the course of the growing season? From a feeding standpoint, could the ground produce a more efficient crop, even hay?

I ask because my impression of a cornstalk is that is that it would be as near to nothing nutritionally as pine bark, and the leaves little better. When we had the dairy my dad put up sorghum silage, but it at least had a high sugar content. He dug a ten-foot-deep
trench in the side of a hill, put the sileage in (unchopped), covered it with dirt and let it cook. Smelled like a rum distillery around the place.

Anyway, my ignorance in this matter is obvious, and I was just curious---is there more to a cornstalk than I thought?

You grind the whole corn stalk with ears. If done right your are catching the corn at a time when the stalks have a higher nutritional value. Surprisingly corn stalks have more nutritional value than you think. A few old timers where I grew up would pick their corn (harvest the ears) then bale the corn stalks for fodder. It is much more than something to keep the cow's ribs apart and can be a good source of high quality nutrients in a balanced ration. The fact is with today's cows you can't afford to put filler in the ration, a cow's ability to produce milk is often limited buy how much she will eat, in a lower quality ration they get full before they get enough nutrition. Good cows are often in energy deficient, or using more energy than they can eat when they freshen. Also remember you're dealing with a ruminant this is an animal that was designed to eat forage and if you don't feed enough you cause other problems. Some times corn becomes incidental silage but most of the time it's planted for that purpose. If the farmer knows they're going to ensile the corn they may pick a variety that's a little longer (takes more days to grow) or they sometimes can plant corn for silage a little later depending on how their field work is going. I live in Northeast Wisconsin and probably 80% of the corn planted here in ensiled, when we lived in Tennessee less than 20% was chopped. In Michigan where I grew up about 50/50 between silage and picked or combined. Remember hay is nothing more than grass that's cut, dried and harvested and you can keep stock on hay. A companion to corn silage is haylage or hay chopped and harvested, handled, stored and feed just like corn silage.

To add to wisbaker:

Average corn silage is 18-20 tons per acre. Well managed alfalfa fields don't get half that.

Growing calves 600 lbs need 11-12% protien in their diet, corn silage is 7-9% protein. It doesn't take much of a supplement to make up for 3% shortage.

Some cows do well on a straight silage ration, some do not.

With ruminants you're not feeding the beast, you're feeding the bugs in the rumen, they in turn feed the beast.

Nate

Some corn types are considered silage types, they get a bit bushier and wouldn't harvest good for just corn yield.

But typically it's just field corn. One often plans which will be the silage field before planting, but that can change as the year moves along. Often the silage field is planted later, or behind a hay crop or some such, and the corn wouldn't mature into regular corn.

But, generally, it's just field corn.

When you harvest it about now, it gets chopped into short bits, like a leaf/wood chipper works, and the green stalk and leaves and chopped soft cob/kernals are full of nutrition, starch, and energy.

When packed in a silo and sealed from air, the microbes fermenting on it produce sort-of pickle juice and that keeps the silage fresh. It's typically 50-70% moisture to make it work up right. If oxygen is allowed into the silage, the wrong microbes develop and it creates a smelly, toxic, moldy mess.

Often the bottom part of the stalk is cut kinda high. The rest of the stalk, all the leaves, the husks, the cob, and the corn itself makes an almost balanced feed just what cattle and dairy esp need. It's a lot softer and green than you think, not an old dried up stalk.

Alfalfa, in my area being cut 4 times a year, and only planted once every 5 years or so, is probably a bit more efficient. What hurts silage a bit is the high moisture content - costs a lot to haul all that water around.

Good questions! I see others have good replies, I'm probably just repeating them...

--->Paul

Lots of good information! Thanks, guys!