A truckload of hay is 48,000 pounds, a “small” 250-ton silo bag and a 1,000-ton pile or bunker are 500,000 and 2,000,000 pounds, respectively...

With lower milk and beef prices coupled with increasing corn seed prices, there is good reason to contemplate the optimum planting rate for silage corn. Recently, researchers in both Virginia and Wisconsin weighed in on the topic. Gonzalo Ferreira, extension dairy scientist at Virginia Tech, reported on the second year of planting rate study in the Dairy Pipeline newsletter. In 2015, silage corn was planted in four southern Virginia plots at rates of 22,000 to...

Adequately processed kernels separated from the stover and leaves using the float test. The title might fool you into thinking we’re discussing NFL stats, but the focus is actually a topic with...

Forage is an indispensable part of dairy cow diets. However, due to its bulkiness and the inherently low levels of fiber digestibility, cows are limited in how much forage they can consume...

In my many years spent as a county extension agronomist in one of the largest dairy counties in Wisconsin, I heard a lot of reasons to grow brown midrib (BMR) corn and a lot of reasons not to...

A number of years ago one of my kids came home with their report card and presented it to me. Embedded alongside the list of class names and numbers were a few B’s and a couple of C’s...

Visual characteristics of BMR hybrids include a darker stalk and leaf mid-rib. The brown mid-rib (BMR) corn silage market is still nowhere close to that of conventional silage corn, but hyb...

Jason Felling wasn’t expecting the letter he received in the mail stating their farm, Felling Dairy LLC, was a finalist in World Forage Analysis Superbowl held at this year’s World Dairy Exp...

Ferraretto is a research associate at the Miner Institute; Shaver is a dairy nutritionist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The main purpose of ensiling forages is to maintain the n...

Weather conditions in 2015 across many regions of the U.S. ranged from early monsoons to late summer dryness. That, of course, excludes Southern California where the ongoing drought continues to...