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Silage quality may be better than you think

Bill Weiss, Professor at the Ohio State University was in Defiance County on Friday, August 10 talking with a room full of farmers considering options for their drought stressed corn crop.

One of the options is silage and Weiss tells Brownfield silage quality from drought stressed corn may not be as bad as you might think.

“People value corn silage based on the amount of grain in the corn, historically,” said Weiss. “But just as important is how digestible the fiber is and based on previous years and previous studies drought stressed corn has higher digestibility than normal corn, so a lot of the loss we see in lost grain, is made up in better fiber.”

Audio: Bill Weiss, Professor, The Ohio State University (5:10 mp3)

Another question being asked, what’s that silage worth? Diane Shoemaker, field specialist in Dairy Economics at Ohio State says that’s not easy to answer, but for both the livestock farmer and the grain farmer there is a process to look at.

“For the dairyman, he’s trying to buy a good feed,” said Shoemaker. “What is the feed value of corn silage to his animals, so we have a way of looking historically what that feed price might be and typically the price for the dairyman tends to be the high end of the value range, while the minimum value to the grain producer is, what is it worth if I harvest this crop as grain and sell it on the market.”

Audio: Diane Shoemaker, field specialist, dairy economics, OSU (3:55 mp3)