Trial & Error with Forages May Lead to Better Herd Health

Trial and Error with Forages May Lead to Better Herd Health

By Melissa Hart

When the rain is short, and the dust gets thick dairy producers have a valid concern about crop yields and feed reserves. Getting creative about stretching feed is where Daniel Olson of Lena, Wisconsin shines.

As the owner of Forage Innovations, a forage consulting business, Olsen works with over 700,000 cows in 20 states. He is also able to offer his expertise as a dairy producer. Olson says that when you have a lot of farms that want to feed a high forage diet but do not have enough forage to make that work, the fiber in forage becomes a premium. Finding a way to include a high fiber crop in the crop rotation becomes the pursuit.

Working with David Johnson, a dairyman who runs two dairies and farms 5000 acres in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Olson was asked for advice on tweaking their forage program. He suggested a cocktail mix of BMR Sorghum/Sudan, three different types of clovers and ryegrass. Johnson explained Olson’s rational for this cocktail was, “That if we get dry, the BMR/ Sorghum would do well and if we are wet, the grasses and clovers are going to do well.” He continued, “We started out cold and wet and our first crop cocktail was kind of soso, but our BMR/Sorghum did not do very well. It continued to get over 40 inches of rain and the grasses and clovers did extremely well.”

Johnson said it was a learning curve for not only for him but for his nutritionist as well. Where he used to focus on crude protein, they are now looking more at digestibility. Additionally, the cash flow is important, “I’ve been pushed by my accountant the last few years about how much money we are giving to the feed mill out of our milk check and that is something I’m striving for on our dairy; to keep more of our milk check,” Johnson commented.

Since Johnson added the cocktail mix to their cropping plan, their goals have changed. They want to have a year of corn, then a year of cocktail and then a year of corn with some alfalfa rotated in somewhere. They believe that if they put corn in after the cocktail, they will have increased yields of corn, as if it were the first year they planted corn in that field. After some experimentation, Johnson said, “On the wetter ground that we have, Alfalfa varieties don’t do well, it’s hard to get corn and sorghum in some of these fields, so we are going to seed it to grass, like they do in Europe.”

The new crop rotation has improved their nutrient management plan as well. According to Johnson, when they grow the cocktail, “It can handle manure all summer long and that’s what’s really cool about it. We are able to put a lot of manure on in the summertime and not have such a problem in the fall if it gets wet.”

The ration that Johnson is feeding is down to about a pound and a half of high-quality alfalfa haylage. The cocktail and alfalfa haylage quality is about the same. “We have eliminated soy hulls in our ration. We used to use soy hulls to stretch the feed a little bit and give us more digestible fiber in the ration.” Johnson continued, “We don’t feed cottonseed anymore, we are just feeding corn silage, cocktail, alfalfa and I’m down to five and a half pounds of dry corn and a protein mix. Our cows are forage eaters and that’s what we are striving for. We want to keep more of our milk check.”

The cows are crossbred at Johnson’s farm, “We have a Holstein, Montbeliarde and Swedish Red cross and we average 85 pounds a day but we run real high components.” Johnson continued, “One dairy is at about 4.3 percent fat and the other is at a 4.5 – 4.6 and about a 3.2 protein.” According to Johnson their crossbred cows do not require a high starch diet, they work well on digestible fiber and a higher protein ration.

Yields were similar with the cocktail and the corn silage Johnson commented, “Most years it will average similarly to corn silage yields. In our neck of the woods, we don’t get 25-ton corn silage, most years we will average 17-ton, but we had third crop cocktail last year average five to six tons less.”

Johnson said they had to increase their acres to attain the yields they needed but the trade-off is in cow health. “In the long run I think the cow health is better off. The feet health is better, we have had very few abscesses with the feet, and we don’t deal with DA’s anymore either,” Johnson commented.

BMR/Sorghum Sudan grass requires about two-thirds of the water that corn silage requires. Olson added that in the event of an extreme dry year, the Italian ryegrass will die off and what will be left is the BMR/ Sorghum Sudan crop which he says is fairly good risk reduction. Johnson added that after the first frost in October the cocktail will continue to grow.

The sugar content in the cocktail is high therefore the cows do not require as much starch. With these grasses the cows are eating almost as many kilos of sugar as the normal starch in a ration and the cows are not getting acidosis. “For years we were feeding 28 to 30 percent starch in our cow’s ration, we are down to 23-24 percent right now and these cows are healthy,” commented Johnson. The forage averages about 67 percent in their ration. “I would be comfortable going higher than that, but I’m trying to make the forage stretch as long as I can,” Johnson said.

Ad deadline for the May/June issue of Ohio Holstein News is May 5

PROMOTING DAIRY SCIENCE

To reinforce dairy’s nutritional benefits, your dairy checko program works with those who influence others about healthy eating, like registered dietitians, school nutrition directors, pediatricians and school nurses, so that they become advocates for dairy and recommend milk, cheese and yogurt as part of a healthy diet. , One way the American Dairy Association Mideast reaches these influencers is by placing advertisements in state health professional association journals, such as FamilyDoc and The Family Physician, the o cial magazines of West Virginia and Ohio chapters of the American Academy of Family Physicians and Ohio Pediatrics, the premiere magazine of the Ohio chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The ads, which reach more than 13,000 doctors several times a year, highlight a variety of topics including research supporting dairy’s health benefits, dairy's role in disease prevention and available resources from ADA Mideast.