Galen Erickson (Full Presentation)

Eric Buck Author

08/01/2024 Added

7 Plays

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Steps to Success: Enhancing Silage Quality Through Timing Considerations

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[00:00:00.000]Great to have everybody here.
[00:00:07.360]Yeah, it's surprising to me that it's been, I think, 10 years since we had this first
[00:00:12.640]discussion, and I've been on a silage habit, you know, years and years ago when Terry
[00:00:20.320]Klopfenstein was alive and Jim and I and others were talking, we thought silage was a really
[00:00:28.240]good option. And so really, the way it works here with us is that we try and think, okay,
[00:00:35.120]what are good fits for the beef industry? Start planning ahead and answering research
[00:00:39.800]questions that we have, and then once we have some of those questions answered, it's time
[00:00:45.120]to extend that information. And frankly, Lallemand approached us and we teamed up with them
[00:00:52.220]in Iowa State, and that's what led us down this path. So I appreciate Lallemand's support.
[00:00:56.680]Everybody kind of knows how that works.
[00:00:58.220]Right? The reason you didn't have to pay anything today is because Lallemand's helping you out
[00:01:01.760]with that. But it's great for us to have you here and host you here. It will be a great
[00:01:08.520]day. A lot of information, but actually, Adrian with Lallemand, Dr. Jess Sperber with UNL,
[00:01:17.520]and a group of us have been planning, and they did a better job of planning this year
[00:01:22.560]than what we've done in the past. So it's actually not just jam-packed. Right? We'll
[00:01:28.200]have plenty of time for questions and answers and so on. And then at the end of the day,
[00:01:34.380]I'm excited to host you for a tour at our new Klosterman Feedlot Innovation Center.
[00:01:42.020]Not directly tied to silage, although that's where we'll be doing a lot of our future
[00:01:45.620]silage work, and some really cool stuff there. So if you're interested, you're welcome
[00:01:50.580]to stick around. You've got to go on the tour with me before you get to have supper.
[00:01:54.560]So that's the only caveat. But then you're free to be on your way.
[00:01:58.180]It is an active construction zone, so I know it's the first, it's the start of
[00:02:05.240]the day, and this is at the end of the day, but I'm telling you this because
[00:02:09.220]some of you will bow out by four o'clock, and that's no problem. You'll think, "Well,
[00:02:13.420]I'm gonna miss the tour, so I'm just gonna drive over there." Don't drive over there.
[00:02:17.140]The only reason why is because it's an active construction zone, and we're
[00:02:21.500]actually having an open house next week, and our construction lead folks is the
[00:02:28.160]Settje group, and frankly, they're finishing up the road and stuff, and you
[00:02:33.020]drive over there, and somebody's gonna take out your vehicle. That's your
[00:02:36.680]problem, right? So don't do that, but so we'll have some instructions when we get
[00:02:40.980]to the other day, so just hang tight, and we'll talk more about the tour. It's
[00:02:44.000]gonna be a great day, though. Okay, so I think I've recognized Jess Sperber and
[00:02:50.840]Adrian with Lallemand did a lot of the heavy lifting, right, and planning for us.
[00:02:54.740]Kip, we just get to talk, and then they get to take care of everything, and
[00:02:58.140]really appreciate Jess' help with all of our extension programming.
[00:03:03.040]Need to make sure I have the remote.
[00:03:07.900]Okay, so my task is one of the things that I'm quite interested in and
[00:03:17.640]I think is quite challenging is, when do you put up silage?
[00:03:21.680]When's the best time to put up silage?
[00:03:23.900]Seems pretty obvious, right?
[00:03:25.420]There's gotta be a best time, but it's actually quite
[00:03:28.120]a complicated task to get silage put up
[00:03:32.060]at the correct time.
[00:03:33.520]Maybe more importantly, we may know the correct time,
[00:03:36.320]hopefully you will after I'm done today,
[00:03:38.860]but then it's how do you get that done
[00:03:40.360]when it's actually in practice and in large operations
[00:03:43.160]and how do I know what it is in the field?
[00:03:44.720]So we're gonna talk through all those things here.
[00:03:47.800]So I'm gonna try and talk a little bit about
[00:03:49.340]how that plant changes, especially around this window
[00:03:52.460]of harvest time, and then what's that do to the nutrients?
[00:03:58.100]Does it have any impact on the ensiling process?
[00:04:01.060]And ultimately, what does performance tell us?
[00:04:06.300]As Kip alluded to, Wisconsin, California, big dairy states,
[00:04:11.880]big silage states, right?
[00:04:14.260]That's my conclusion from your ranking
[00:04:16.740]of silage prevalence across the states.
[00:04:19.560]So dairies do this quite well.
[00:04:22.680]So some of that performance data will be dairy.
[00:04:25.640]I know this is silage for beef, trust me,
[00:04:28.080]beef focused, but if there's an absence of data
[00:04:31.800]and a cow does a little better on some silage
[00:04:34.440]at some point, probably beef will too.
[00:04:36.940]But there won't be a lot of dairy stuff,
[00:04:38.720]but there will be a little, so I'm just forewarning it.
[00:04:41.640]Okay, so what are things that sort of influence
[00:04:46.640]what this dry matter or moisture content,
[00:04:51.720]and I'm gonna use those kind of interchangeably, right?
[00:04:54.960]As producers, we think about moisture oftentimes.
[00:04:58.060]I ask somebody, "What's your silage at?"
[00:05:00.420]And they tell me moisture right away.
[00:05:02.720]As nutritionists, right, we oftentimes,
[00:05:04.620]and the cattle, we think about dry matter.
[00:05:06.920]Well, you know, frankly, it's not that hard, Rick, right?
[00:05:10.020]You can take 100 minus one of them
[00:05:11.740]and you get the other one, okay?
[00:05:13.400]But I'm gonna try and always be clear.
[00:05:15.580]But if it's in the 30s or 40s, I'm talking dry matter.
[00:05:19.200]If it's in the 60s or 70s, I'm talking moisture.
[00:05:21.740]You're just gonna have to follow along
[00:05:23.620]and kind of deduce that on your own.
[00:05:28.040]Clearly as the plant matures and starts filling with grain
[00:05:33.040]and starts drying down, that's what's changing at that point.
[00:05:39.160]So that's influenced by maturity.
[00:05:41.640]The question is, are you harvesting?
[00:05:45.740]Is it custom harvesting?
[00:05:47.460]Custom harvesting, right, number one thing I hear,
[00:05:51.800]and we're gonna have this on the panel discussion later,
[00:05:53.960]it's why we wanted to have a panel on this topic.
[00:05:56.220]I'm a producer and I'm relying
[00:05:58.020]on custom harvesting.
[00:05:59.640]One of the challenges is I'm gonna harvest
[00:06:01.480]whenever they're coming through,
[00:06:03.020]or whenever they're in my area.
[00:06:04.780]And so do you really get to decide
[00:06:06.620]what the moisture content or dry matter content is?
[00:06:09.240]Or is it just that?
[00:06:10.320]Cutting height does influence this some.
[00:06:12.580]What grain content do you want?
[00:06:15.160]And I'm gonna show you how that changes some.
[00:06:17.660]In general, right, the range that I see and hear about
[00:06:22.620]is 25 to 45.
[00:06:24.460]I think we all all of a sudden say,
[00:06:25.680]well, 25's too wet, 45's too wet.
[00:06:28.000]25's too dry.
[00:06:29.680]So, I'm gonna tell you what the optimum is now
[00:06:32.820]and you can stop listening for the rest of the time.
[00:06:34.780]I think it's 37.
[00:06:36.860]There's some reasons for that which we can get into.
[00:06:39.420]The challenge I see,
[00:06:41.580]which I'm not gonna be able to address,
[00:06:44.360]and the last bullet point in my entire talk
[00:06:46.820]is on this same topic.
[00:06:48.320]How in the world do we measure or monitor that
[00:06:52.060]in standing corn in the field?
[00:06:54.400]Milk line I'll talk about, right?
[00:06:56.180]There's maybe some indicators.
[00:06:57.980]That this is the difficult part.
[00:06:59.740]So we need some remote ways, I think,
[00:07:03.660]to measure this in standing corn crop.
[00:07:06.700]The other thing I'm going to hit on again,
[00:07:08.580]but I want to emphasize, is that you need to measure
[00:07:11.880]moisture content at the time of chopping, green chop,
[00:07:16.360]and again then when it's in silage,
[00:07:18.160]and I'll justify that for you.
[00:07:20.960]Because the silage piles get a little bit wetter,
[00:07:23.320]and I will prove that with some data.
[00:07:25.420]Okay, so students oftentimes,
[00:07:27.960]say, if I have, I probably have lots of criticisms
[00:07:31.040]from students, but one would be,
[00:07:32.380]is that I have plenty of data I like to use.
[00:07:34.320]And I, that's fair, I think that's true.
[00:07:37.580]So I'm gonna show you some numbers,
[00:07:39.340]but I'll always talk through what those numbers
[00:07:42.020]I think mean and what the conclusion is.
[00:07:43.860]Okay, so I'm gonna start off with,
[00:07:46.060]to show you how this dry matter changes.
[00:07:49.220]This was some work we did,
[00:07:51.740]done work with hybrids in the past and so on.
[00:07:54.940]This was some master's choice hybrids
[00:07:57.940]work that we did.
[00:07:58.980]And the green chop,
[00:08:03.000]excuse me, right?
[00:08:05.120]So the corn silage at harvest time,
[00:08:07.840]we had three different hybrids.
[00:08:09.880]We wanted them all to be the same moisture content.
[00:08:12.400]And we sampled every load
[00:08:14.520]and there were 29 to 33 loads
[00:08:16.520]at our farm operations.
[00:08:17.680]They grew the corn, they harvested it.
[00:08:20.020]We sampled every load that came in.
[00:08:21.820]You can see what those dry matters were
[00:08:24.440]plus the standard deviation.
[00:08:26.160]Is that pretty clear to everybody?
[00:08:27.920]I think we did pretty good, 37.9, 38.5, 37.3.
[00:08:32.600]Anybody want to do better, good luck, right?
[00:08:35.160]So I think we were pretty close on the same moisture,
[00:08:37.440]same moisture and dry matter content.
[00:08:39.260]Okay, so what did that look like?
[00:08:42.220]This is now the silage.
[00:08:45.300]Now I'm going to come back to this point,
[00:08:48.800]but do you remember what those previous numbers were, 37, 38?
[00:08:53.300]And now my silage sampled -- now you could ask a couple
[00:08:57.900]of questions.
[00:08:58.780]One question which would be logical is did we sample this
[00:09:01.940]well? Did we get a representative sample?
[00:09:04.660]That's a fair question.
[00:09:05.700]We tried, okay, so it's three samples.
[00:09:08.420]This was bagged, sampled the bag.
[00:09:10.540]Debatable whether we got it sampled well enough.
[00:09:13.280]But these are quite a bit wetter or lower in dry matter.
[00:09:17.840]The other question you should ask is
[00:09:20.900]that how did we do the dry matter?
[00:09:22.640]In other words, when you put up silage, it ferments
[00:09:27.440]and wets.
[00:09:27.880]What gets produced when you ferment it?
[00:09:30.400]Well, one of those things is lactic acid.
[00:09:33.560]One of those things is acetic acid and some other,
[00:09:37.100]hopefully minor amounts of VFAs.
[00:09:39.360]What happens to VFAs, or at least is at risk
[00:09:43.200]at high temperatures during drying?
[00:09:44.700]They're called volatile fatty acids.
[00:09:47.700]What's volatile mean?
[00:09:48.640]It means you can smell it.
[00:09:52.680]Everybody understand, right?
[00:09:54.360]Silage, one of the best things about silage, well,
[00:09:56.260]I think one of the best things about silage is it smells.
[00:09:57.860]It's good silage.
[00:09:58.920]It smells too if it's bad silage, but why does it smell?
[00:10:06.360]Because there's volatiles in it, right?
[00:10:08.100]So if I dry it, do I blow off all of those volatiles during drying?
[00:10:13.960]That's a fair question too.
[00:10:15.280]But either way, these are 33 to 34.
[00:10:18.220]I've got some better information on this.
[00:10:19.980]But the other thing I wanted to mention when we put up silage, right,
[00:10:24.700]which you all know and I think you'll see throughout today some,
[00:10:27.840]pH is a good indicator of whether it fermented well, and there's targets, right,
[00:10:32.760]and we were in those targets.
[00:10:33.920]Lactic acid content's another target, and then you watch what these other VFAs are.
[00:10:39.040]That's what I look for.
[00:10:40.720]There's plenty of other silage experts here in the room.
[00:10:43.660]They can tell you what they look for.
[00:10:45.160]Okay, so there's the comparison.
[00:10:50.120]That's probably more extreme than I recall seeing in any of our other examples,
[00:10:55.000]but it's why I wanted to use it and show it to you.
[00:10:57.820]And these were in bags.
[00:10:59.820]Okay, so pretty pristine environment.
[00:11:03.420]I'm not recommending bagging in large quantities, right?
[00:11:06.860]There's limitations in bags, but it's also a pretty good environment
[00:11:09.700]if you're going to ensile smaller quantities.
[00:11:12.260]So pretty big change in dry matter where the silage is getting wetter
[00:11:17.740]from that initial fermentation, and I think it ferments some over time.
[00:11:21.300]And I think I discussed all these other things.
[00:11:27.800]Now these are some other data which I think are probably a little more representative.
[00:11:32.240]And by the way, in doing the slides, I realized I wanted to change the order slightly,
[00:11:39.640]so there's a few slides that are out of order.
[00:11:41.720]You'll have to -- it's good to keep you on track
[00:11:43.820]so you're guessing where the slides are.
[00:11:46.460]This is some work.
[00:11:48.860]Can't remember for sure location because I did a lot of other silage reading
[00:11:55.420]when I was preparing for this, and now I've got about --
[00:11:57.780]10 of those in my head, and I can't remember the location for all.
[00:12:00.500]A lot of them were from Wisconsin, which makes sense, right?
[00:12:03.920]There's a lot of good work out of the University of Wisconsin on silage.
[00:12:07.520]So I believe so, but I don't want to offend anybody.
[00:12:10.460]It's some good work out of Washington State.
[00:12:12.300]Okay. So what they did here is in this particular case,
[00:12:18.180]they were looking at cutting silage early or late, okay?
[00:12:22.960]That's how they defined it, so that's why I'm keeping that definition, and they had what
[00:12:27.760]they defined as more flintier type and more flint-dent corn.
[00:12:31.440]Actually, this, I think, was actually in Europe, I believe.
[00:12:37.360]I think it was in France.
[00:12:39.040]Yeah, thank you.
[00:12:39.740]I knew I'd messed that up.
[00:12:41.700]See? It was in France because that's where the flint and the flinty-dent corn.
[00:12:45.700]Anyway, so the dry matter that they put up in the green chop and the dry matter
[00:12:52.300]of the silage, notice, are about 1 percent, in some cases,
[00:12:57.740]a little less, in some cases, a little more.
[00:12:59.240]So my rule of thumb is that when I put up silage, it's going to probably get
[00:13:04.140]about 1 percentage unit wetter, okay?
[00:13:07.140]So 1 percentage of dry matter goes down, or if you want to think moisture,
[00:13:10.980]1 percentage of moisture unit goes up.
[00:13:13.140]The other reason I put this on here is I'm intrigued by the dry matter moisture
[00:13:24.640]of the forage versus.
[00:13:27.720]the ear with the grain, and one thing that we've observed,
[00:13:32.460]which I'm going to show you, is that those are quite different during this period
[00:13:36.480]of time as that plant's maturing.
[00:13:39.140]So notice the dry matter of the plant part is 22.8, the ear was 35.7,
[00:13:48.220]and obviously the whole plant is in between those two, which makes sense, right?
[00:13:53.280]And that gets even a little more dramatic when you go,
[00:13:57.700]to later in the harvest.
[00:13:59.640]So what's the point of that?
[00:14:01.500]The point is there's more moisture in the stalk and the stem and the leaves
[00:14:06.640]than there is in the ear, particularly in the grain,
[00:14:09.000]and that gets a little more pronounced as we go to later,
[00:14:13.400]later dryer silage time.
[00:14:16.360]The other thing is, is that when we do that,
[00:14:23.480]we've tried to separate the grain,
[00:14:27.680]from the forage, and so now if this is where more
[00:14:31.720]of the wetness is, down in the lower parts of the stem,
[00:14:35.060]cutting height's going to influence that.
[00:14:36.920]Does that make sense to everybody?
[00:14:38.620]And then this is the flint dent corn, same idea.
[00:14:42.680]Wetter in the forage, dryer in the ear,
[00:14:45.520]and those are some pretty extreme examples, right,
[00:14:48.400]of 30% dry matter silage to 45 to 48% silage dry matter.
[00:14:53.800]Okay, so what do people use?
[00:14:55.760]Everybody's heard of Milk Line, right?
[00:14:57.660]Everybody uses Milk Line, I think, as an indicator.
[00:15:00.800]And then you talk to others and they say, "Well,
[00:15:03.520]Milk Line's a terrible indicator of dry matter or moisture."
[00:15:07.400]I can't find a lot of information on this topic, okay?
[00:15:13.460]What I see in reports, which is mostly extension reports,
[00:15:20.440]is that Milk Line is not a great indicator of dry matter
[00:15:23.600]because it varies with environmental conditions
[00:15:26.080]and hybrids.
[00:15:27.640]And I'm sure that's true, but I don't know
[00:15:31.880]if it's a good recommendation to not use it
[00:15:33.720]because you give me something that's better.
[00:15:36.680]You understand my point?
[00:15:37.740]So I'm not saying that it's a great indicator,
[00:15:40.300]but I'm saying is it the best indicator?
[00:15:42.500]That's the question I have for you to think about.
[00:15:44.580]Okay.
[00:15:47.740]A little bit more older data.
[00:15:50.720]Some people in the room weren't born then.
[00:15:54.240]Some of you are thinking that's outrageous,
[00:15:57.040]that's something.
[00:15:57.620]Some people weren't born in '96, right?
[00:16:00.660]We have variable ages, but some excellent work, and, again,
[00:16:06.780]this is looking at milk line category
[00:16:10.940]and whole plant dry matter, and you don't have to see the dots,
[00:16:15.880]but this is 30 and this is 50, and as you go
[00:16:19.040]across milk line maturing, it gets drier.
[00:16:22.620]Is there noise within a milk line?
[00:16:26.000]Absolutely.
[00:16:27.600]But in general, it goes up as milk line progresses.
[00:16:31.100]I think that's the key.
[00:16:32.660]Better summary down here of actually the data is
[00:16:39.360]from dent all the way through to past three-quarters milk line.
[00:16:44.920]Mean dry matters went from 30.6 to obviously 48, right?
[00:16:51.800]So on average, as milk line progresses,
[00:16:55.240]the plant is getting drier,
[00:16:57.080]and that's the key.
[00:16:57.580]And that's why I think it could still be used as an indicator,
[00:16:59.980]but it probably varies.
[00:17:01.540]That's the only, again, I'm always careful here.
[00:17:07.120]The only published data I found,
[00:17:09.940]doesn't mean it's the only one out there,
[00:17:11.840]is what I just showed you on milk line and dry matter.
[00:17:14.720]There might be a whole bunch more that I missed somewhere,
[00:17:17.040]and I'd be delighted to get that information if people know it.
[00:17:20.140]Okay, second question is,
[00:17:27.560]what's it do to digestibility now
[00:17:30.200]as I have that plant progressing
[00:17:33.820]and getting drier close to harvest?
[00:17:36.620]So this is, I'm going to show you a series of experiments.
[00:17:41.380]This one is also out of Wisconsin
[00:17:45.220]and was a meta-analysis, okay?
[00:17:48.940]So it's a combination of a lot of individual studies,
[00:17:51.480]and it looked at dry matter content of the silage
[00:17:57.540]and, in this case, ruminal digestibilities
[00:18:00.920]of fiber and starch.
[00:18:02.920]Next, I'm going to show you, you know,
[00:18:07.600]other total tract digestibilities,
[00:18:09.380]but this is using in situ digestibility,
[00:18:12.020]and notice that, yeah, I think here in the middle,
[00:18:16.120]ruminal digestibility of fibers were lower,
[00:18:18.920]so it was higher on the ends,
[00:18:21.040]which doesn't make sense to me,
[00:18:22.640]and starch digestibility really wasn't affected
[00:18:26.600]by moisture content.
[00:18:28.140]So the starch is going to get digested.
[00:18:29.920]I take it as the starch is getting digested
[00:18:32.120]in the rumen regardless.
[00:18:33.120]This is kind of puzzling here in a minute
[00:18:36.200]because I'm going to show you some other information,
[00:18:37.680]but I didn't want to hide this from you,
[00:18:39.420]that this is the ruminal digestibility measured
[00:18:41.820]across the meta-analysis.
[00:18:43.180]This is now that milk line issue
[00:18:49.100]as well as what's the kernel dry matter.
[00:18:53.600]So again, this,
[00:18:57.500]I believe, is out of Washington.
[00:19:00.420]I'm not 100% sure on that. Again, I should have these in memory.
[00:19:04.360]But looking at milk
[00:19:07.660]stay early dense, quarter milk line,
[00:19:10.300]third, half, and two-thirds.
[00:19:12.600]And these are different studies, one through five.
[00:19:16.560]So these are different experiments. That's why there's
[00:19:19.540]some points in some of those, and then there's other points
[00:19:22.540]that are missing by study. So all I think
[00:19:25.520]it was useful for me in this
[00:19:27.480]summary is looking at, in general, as you go
[00:19:30.380]from here,
[00:19:32.960]it gets drier. Okay, that's obvious,
[00:19:36.080]I think. But then I was also intrigued
[00:19:39.560]on what is the dry matter at black layer.
[00:19:42.560]And it's about, what,
[00:19:45.620]45 to 42 percent
[00:19:48.680]dry matter at black layer. So to me,
[00:19:51.580]I think there's a lot of change that's happening from
[00:19:54.500]about two to three weeks ahead of black layer
[00:19:57.460]to black layer, where this plan is changing
[00:20:00.380]and there's our window.
[00:20:02.180]The other thing in this study, which I thought was
[00:20:06.800]also intriguing, is similar to what I showed before,
[00:20:10.060]the kernel dry matters
[00:20:12.200]during that half milk line, this is only from
[00:20:15.760]study two, was 55 or
[00:20:18.860]61, which again, what I said earlier
[00:20:21.900]is that the driest part of that
[00:20:24.840]plant standing in the field is the kernel.
[00:20:27.440]In that plant. The plant itself,
[00:20:30.580]the forage component, is the wetter component.
[00:20:32.980]Okay.
[00:20:38.180]Another study, so now instead of in situ
[00:20:41.300]digestibility,
[00:20:42.360]this is in vitro digestibility.
[00:20:47.940]Kip, I think my order's off. That's why that one was out.
[00:20:55.720]Did I replace the right
[00:20:57.420]slide set? That's got to be Kip's fault.
[00:21:00.520]He's in charge of that folder part, wasn't he?
[00:21:02.640]The only reason I say that's because I had
[00:21:06.380]labeled these. This is, I believe, the
[00:21:08.940]whole plant, and this is only the stover
[00:21:12.120]component, because I had to look that up, and I knew you wouldn't know
[00:21:15.320]it either, and I'd either have to remember it or I'd put a label on it.
[00:21:18.220]So I put a label on it yesterday. It doesn't show up. Anyway, it doesn't matter.
[00:21:21.020]So this is the whole plant
[00:21:24.220]in vitro dry matter digestibility. This is
[00:21:27.400]the forage component of that whole plant only.
[00:21:30.120]Now this study and some of these studies
[00:21:33.460]when they do silage work, they look at growing degree units
[00:21:36.340]as it progresses throughout the season, which is fine
[00:21:39.620]but doesn't mean a lot to me when I just look at that
[00:21:42.380]graph and I'm assuming doesn't mean a lot to you.
[00:21:44.580]Just to put that in perspective, this is the area
[00:21:48.520]of silage harvest is about
[00:21:51.480]around that 1,000 in this particular
[00:21:54.480]location that this study was done.
[00:21:57.380]They also
[00:22:00.260]then looked at total track. In this case, it's total track
[00:22:03.160]starch digestibility. This is actually a
[00:22:06.240]summary of two different studies and expressed
[00:22:09.200]as dry matter of the silage increases.
[00:22:12.140]Starch digestibility does go down, but I
[00:22:15.400]want to make sure it's clear where the units are.
[00:22:17.820]Obviously, 100, which you can't go above,
[00:22:20.940]down to 85.
[00:22:23.400]I also want to emphasize this is maybe where
[00:22:27.360]dairy and beef differ.
[00:22:28.700]These are in dairy cows.
[00:22:30.800]And I do think dairy cows, with their intake
[00:22:34.840]and passage rate, have more challenges with
[00:22:37.820]starch digestibility, including total tract,
[00:22:40.760]than in the beef animal.
[00:22:41.920]So I think this type of information is needed
[00:22:44.980]in the beef space, but because there wasn't
[00:22:47.560]something I could use that had dry matter
[00:22:50.360]varying of silage with total tract starch
[00:22:53.300]digestibility in the beef space, I have to
[00:22:56.720]show the dairy one.
[00:22:57.340]My point is, is that I might be wrong,
[00:23:00.020]but I would expect this to be a flatter line
[00:23:02.840]in the beef area, and that's what they call
[00:23:06.300]an hypothesis.
[00:23:06.900]So if nobody doesn't like that comment,
[00:23:08.760]all you got to do is give us money and we'll
[00:23:10.560]study it, and then you might be right.
[00:23:13.680]In this case, I can't remember.
[00:23:20.040]I don't believe so, but that's only because
[00:23:23.700]of the date on it, and yes, that's a good
[00:23:27.320]point, kernel processing, which we won't
[00:23:29.780]really get to because my topic's pretty
[00:23:31.800]laser-focused on dry matter.
[00:23:33.560]Kernel processing would also influence
[00:23:35.440]that, absolutely, and should be done with
[00:23:37.980]kernel process today, or better yet, you
[00:23:40.500]give us more money and we'll do it both
[00:23:41.940]ways.
[00:23:42.240]Okay, more recent.
[00:23:47.160]So you notice I'm trying to kind of take
[00:23:49.100]you from some older work to some more
[00:23:51.020]recent work, right?
[00:23:52.040]That was one of my goals.
[00:23:57.300]And I think these graphs are useful to
[00:23:59.760]have together.
[00:24:00.400]They printed them together and I chose
[00:24:03.020]not to separate them, okay?
[00:24:04.660]Now, why did I do that?
[00:24:07.040]Mostly because I'm going to take you
[00:24:08.420]through some other units now.
[00:24:09.820]So if you can't read that stock, this is
[00:24:12.400]dry matter yield.
[00:24:13.500]This is crude protein.
[00:24:15.980]Yield's really important if you're
[00:24:18.080]producing silage.
[00:24:19.060]Not really critical for what we're
[00:24:20.640]discussing right now, but it is really
[00:24:22.200]important if you're producing silage.
[00:24:23.620]Protein, I'm not all that worried about
[00:24:26.180]in this case.
[00:24:27.580]ADF, NDF, in vitro digestibility,
[00:24:31.540]ear to stover ratio.
[00:24:33.820]Okay, so ear to grain.
[00:24:35.880]Now, in their study, this is an
[00:24:38.520]agronomy journal, they, again, have
[00:24:41.360]growing degree units, and I'm not a
[00:24:45.400]corn plant expert.
[00:24:46.440]Maybe many of you are, but they have
[00:24:49.040]an arrow here where they started R1.
[00:24:51.320]R1's when the plant's silky.
[00:24:53.100]So it's pretty far to the left in terms
[00:24:57.260]of maturity, and then advancing in
[00:24:59.960]maturity.
[00:25:00.380]My point is, when I look at this, the
[00:25:05.580]ear to stover ratio data tell me that
[00:25:08.280]this 1,000 to 1,100, this part of the
[00:25:12.800]graph, these two dots, and all of these
[00:25:15.460]are kind of silage time.
[00:25:19.040]Does that make sense to everybody?
[00:25:20.220]So I could have left off all the others,
[00:25:23.880]but I wanted to show what they had.
[00:25:25.820]Okay, so what happens?
[00:25:27.240]As the plant is maturing, fiber content is going up.
[00:25:33.300]Okay, so this is 38% ADF.
[00:25:37.100]This is 68% NDF.
[00:25:40.900]Protein's going down.
[00:25:42.800]Okay, this is in that 7% to 8%,
[00:25:45.220]down into 7% when you get to silage time.
[00:25:48.680]Dry matter yield didn't vary.
[00:25:50.700]Digestibility, so fiber's content's going up.
[00:25:54.340]Digestibility's going down.
[00:25:55.800]I'm going to show you.
[00:25:57.220]I think I wanted to include this because it's agronomy work.
[00:25:59.920]I'm going to show you some a little bit better information
[00:26:03.180]on how that changes.
[00:26:04.200]Here is back to that same study that was in France
[00:26:09.460]where I was talking about dry matter change
[00:26:12.520]and the plant and the stover.
[00:26:14.620]So now I'm expressing what happens to percent starch,
[00:26:19.320]what happens to the fiber content,
[00:26:21.660]and what happened to the pH of the silage.
[00:26:24.860]pH of the silage, not really impacted
[00:26:27.200]by this, but as we went from early to late,
[00:26:30.400]notice that with flint corn,
[00:26:33.380]which we don't really produce,
[00:26:34.460]not much change with flint dent corn,
[00:26:37.060]fiber decreased, starch increased,
[00:26:40.460]which contradicts a bit on the previous one, right,
[00:26:43.440]where fiber was going up.
[00:26:44.560]So that's why I wanted to show it.
[00:26:45.660]And then I have some better ones.
[00:26:48.440]This work, I think, is a little better.
[00:26:52.520]And again, I had highlighted this for you before
[00:26:55.160]in my revision, but that's okay.
[00:26:57.620]This right here is NDF content for silage
[00:27:01.420]that goes from 28.3% dry matter
[00:27:05.140]to 29.2% to 31.8% to 39.6%.
[00:27:10.560]So as you're going left to right,
[00:27:11.960]silage is getting drier, harvested later.
[00:27:14.880]And the two primary things that change
[00:27:18.080]is NDF content was going down,
[00:27:20.660]so did ADF a little bit,
[00:27:22.180]and starch content is going up.
[00:27:27.160]So here's my question
[00:27:28.740]and what got us interested in this type of information.
[00:27:32.100]If starch is going up,
[00:27:35.980]fiber is going down,
[00:27:38.860]not real clear what's happened to fiber digestibility,
[00:27:42.240]should we be delaying silage harvest
[00:27:45.520]from everybody's old rule of thumb,
[00:27:48.100]if I got to start at 65% moisture, 35% dry man.
[00:27:52.040]Do you know what happens when you start
[00:27:54.180]at harvesting silage as a goal at 35%
[00:27:57.140]dry matter or 65% water?
[00:27:59.500]You actually start at 30 or 32 because everybody gets anxious.
[00:28:05.080]Even our farm operations get anxious to start early.
[00:28:08.600]You understand my point?
[00:28:11.520]So my question for everybody and what we're going
[00:28:15.540]to show is why did we get into this?
[00:28:17.920]Because I was interested with starch increasing,
[00:28:20.980]fiber going down and some questionable results
[00:28:24.300]on fiber digestibility, what happens around
[00:28:27.120]this window of silage harvest?
[00:28:28.660]Okay, I think the only information I could find
[00:28:33.160]on cutting height, which does not show dry matter well,
[00:28:39.160]but it talks about, I think this is obvious,
[00:28:41.880]so I only showed one example.
[00:28:43.380]As you increase cutting height, you're going
[00:28:45.420]to decrease the fibrous part of the stem,
[00:28:48.100]which then decreases fiber, increases starch,
[00:28:51.460]has some implications on digestibility of that fiber.
[00:28:57.100]But here's the question, you also lose yield.
[00:29:00.260]Okay, so to me it's a balance on cutting height
[00:29:03.500]between yield and what you're harvesting in TDN.
[00:29:06.280]Okay, at least those circles show up.
[00:29:09.760]Okay, so now I'm going to switch and spend a little time
[00:29:14.640]on some of our Nebraska data that was either done here
[00:29:20.520]in plot work and then some feeding data on beef cattle.
[00:29:24.220]Okay, so first off,
[00:29:27.080]this was a study that was done here at the center,
[00:29:32.040]at Eastern Nebraska Center, in our 2016 beef report.
[00:29:36.300]And the student essentially took samples
[00:29:40.680]of the whole plant every week.
[00:29:42.860]Zero is black layer,
[00:29:46.040]at least what we could assess as black layer.
[00:29:49.800]So obviously this is a week before, two weeks before.
[00:29:52.520]Everybody follow the logic?
[00:29:53.420]So if zero is black layer,
[00:29:55.480]we either sampled weeks ahead
[00:29:57.060]of black layer or weeks past black layer.
[00:29:59.380]And we knew we would get the window that we wanted.
[00:30:02.280]Okay, so what happened?
[00:30:04.580]At least in this case, even out to four weeks ahead
[00:30:09.480]for this sampling, we were only at 33% dry matter here.
[00:30:14.100]Didn't change much and then start to get drier.
[00:30:16.520]I'm intrigued by this
[00:30:18.340]because I think we have some other information
[00:30:20.240]that shows we actually would have been wetter.
[00:30:23.030]But the dry matter tonnage yield was pretty good and then kind of increased and then I can't explain the
[00:30:28.530]10.3 and the 9.1 over there other than down below
[00:30:32.350]The Stover is changing. So what I wanted to show from from
[00:30:37.530]wrote the row data is
[00:30:40.590]NDF
[00:30:41.910]Percentage pretty constant and then pretty dramatic change here at the end
[00:30:48.650]NDF digestibility at least for three weeks prior to break black layer pretty constant and then drops off dramatically
[00:30:55.690]So I think there's a lot of change happening in these plants
[00:31:00.190]right after black layer and
[00:31:02.630]I think everybody's shaking their heads. That's an observation. Everybody else has right it dries down quick. We lose fiber
[00:31:08.650]We certainly lose digestibility of that plant and the grain dries out quite quickly
[00:31:13.710]So we thought this
[00:31:18.590]Is an interesting window in a pretty big window
[00:31:21.010]Another follow-up study. This is in a different location
[00:31:24.650]This was actually some work that's been published by Dirk Birkin and this was done out in
[00:31:31.390]The clay center in Nebraska area. Okay, so about an hour and a half west of here irrigated of course and
[00:31:38.330]A couple years I'm going to show so this is we had to pick dates
[00:31:43.190]So we picked September 1 September 15th and September 29th trying to get some
[00:31:48.530]dry times
[00:31:50.070]For year one I can only report the dry matters of this of the first two harvests
[00:31:55.070]And then in this case the agronomist told us we've got a lot of plots
[00:32:00.210]you can sample all the plot all the plants you want just not the place where we're harvesting grain from and
[00:32:06.170]We've planted early maturing hybrids and we planted late maturing hybrids. So that was a great opportunity for us to have a lot of plot work
[00:32:14.190]Dirk didn't think so, but I thought it was a great opportunity
[00:32:18.470]so
[00:32:19.910]Early maturing hybrids notice or 38 percent dry matter already here on September 1
[00:32:25.650]Later maturing hybrids were only 35 on September 1 and they got drier on September 15th
[00:32:33.190]Duh, right and then we didn't we didn't get a good dry matter sample on September 29th
[00:32:38.710]In this particular case
[00:32:43.850]Estimated dry matter tonnage
[00:32:48.410]Which is a little tricky to do in plots with hand harvest
[00:32:51.870]Right went from 11 to 12 2 to 10 10 3. In other words. There is a decrease here
[00:32:58.070]Grain yield was 195 bushels to the acre in this year and this plots
[00:33:02.990]the grain percentage
[00:33:06.370]51.4
[00:33:08.750]52.4 then it jumps to 60
[00:33:11.170]Right. I think everybody knows this in this room, but I'm going to emphasize it because a lot of times I'm talking to agronomy
[00:33:18.350]Or or farming community and they say silage can't be 50% grain 40% or 50% forage
[00:33:25.630]It's got to be 60/40 because that's what we know from harvest
[00:33:29.030]Right that is true. It is about 60/40 maybe even 65/35 at
[00:33:35.910]traditional grain harvest time
[00:33:38.590]It is not that during silage harvest time that cleared everybody
[00:33:43.730]So I still think the rule of thumb actually the number we use is 52 percent grain
[00:33:48.750]48 percent forage at the time of silage harvest cutting height influences that
[00:33:53.050]50/50 is a pretty good number to have in your head
[00:33:56.570]Of course that's on a dry matter basis
[00:33:59.790]But what we did notice is that the grain because of that grain content and the residue
[00:34:05.690]estimated TDN from in vitro digestibility dropping off the corn plant TDN goes up
[00:34:12.310]But grains carrying all of that out here. Obviously the forage is contributing well to that
[00:34:18.230]Over here the second year is a little better data, but a little more complicated
[00:34:23.990]So again same idea the plant dry matter
[00:34:27.130]moderately early
[00:34:29.870]moderately late, okay, so
[00:34:31.870]39:48 to 60
[00:34:35.350]35 47 to 57 we so we did this from like silage time
[00:34:41.270]To obviously way too dry for silage to know what happens grain yield went up even
[00:34:48.170]Went up a little bit from harvest two to three
[00:34:50.690]Corn stover yield went down and particularly dropped off at the so the corn forage part dropped off particularly at the last harvest
[00:34:59.910]grain percentage
[00:35:02.390]50s for these early maturing 50 right here, which is almost perfect silage time right
[00:35:07.730]51.5
[00:35:09.930]fiber digestibility is pretty low and drop off at the end
[00:35:14.150]And TDN yield you can see all that
[00:35:18.110]So this information is available, but again, I think it's consistent that grain is going up
[00:35:23.350]fiber digestibility and content, you know are dropping off immensely especially as we go to dry cream
[00:35:30.710]Okay, last thing then I want to end with and we'll have plenty of time for questions is what happens when you feed stuff?
[00:35:38.670]That's different in dry matter harvested. So we wanted to do this. So this is some work
[00:35:44.510]It's been published in our beef reports and of course scientifically
[00:35:48.050]is we wanted to put up a silage that was 37% dry matter and 43. I'm just
[00:35:58.510]sharing with you that that was our target. We obviously got pretty close to
[00:36:02.510]that which was luck because I talked to you before about you got to kind of
[00:36:06.290]estimate you know what you're going to get when you put it up. But we were
[00:36:10.670]really close so we ended up comparing. I'm going to show you a fair amount of
[00:36:15.170]information comparing this silage to this silage.
[00:36:17.990]Okay so to start with, protein's the same, fiber a little bit lower for the drier
[00:36:25.790]silage. This was harvested from the same field, same hybrids, just at two different
[00:36:30.830]times right. So it should be all the equal, the only effect should be due to
[00:36:34.430]this was obviously done here at NREC. So fiber dropped off and starch went up
[00:36:41.570]from 35 to 40.8. You all have the rule of thumb, I hope you have that rule of thumb,
[00:36:47.930]that if I take and measure starch and silage, and first off, starch analysis is
[00:36:53.630]pretty tough, but if I measure starch analysis in the silage, whatever starch I
[00:36:58.650]get, the rule of thumb is you divide it by 0.7 and that's a pretty fair
[00:37:03.350]estimate of the grain content. Why do you divide that starch in your silage by
[00:37:07.730]0.7? Because presumably all the starch is coming from the grain and presumably
[00:37:13.610]grain averages about 70% starch. You see why the rule of thumb?
[00:37:17.870]May not be perfect in all cases but it's it's so if you use that rule of thumb
[00:37:22.830]our 37% dry matter silage analyzed 35% starch equates to 50.6%
[00:37:31.550]grain. Obviously that'd be 49.4% forage. As we let that dry and then
[00:37:38.210]harvested it at 43% dry matter it was 40.8 and that would calculate to 58% grain content.
[00:37:47.810]Again, that's a ballpark estimate but I want to make sure it's clear. pH was
[00:37:53.030]good. I do got a point out because Galen's in the back of the room freaking
[00:37:57.530]out that I'm talking about 43% dry matter silage. I got a point out that
[00:38:02.090]this was stored in bags. Why did we store it in bags? Because I know one of the
[00:38:07.070]implications of dry silage, if you put it in the bunker you don't get to pack in
[00:38:10.810]and stay packed, right? You drive on and it's spongy. That's one of our best
[00:38:13.690]indicators of whether silage is getting too dry. I know that. I understand
[00:38:17.750]the reason we did that is because I didn't need two big bunkers of 37 and 43
[00:38:25.510]percent dry matter silage, first off. But maybe more importantly, if I can get this
[00:38:31.490]to feed well from a bag situation where the bagging and ensiling
[00:38:37.330]environments ideal or good, then we'll figure out, Galen, how to get maybe it'll
[00:38:42.110]be your knockling. But we'll figure out some way to get it to go into a bunker if 43 is
[00:38:47.690]better. You understand my point? So I just want to be clear, we had a pristine storage
[00:38:53.030]environment, but that was purposeful. It was not, I'm not suggesting that it would work
[00:38:58.210]great in a bunker. Yeah.
[00:39:01.070]Yeah, so these are CVs, right? So it's standard deviation.
[00:39:17.630]Divided by the mean. So the mean goes down, it gets a little bit harder with CV.
[00:39:21.990]That's always one consideration. And from memory, Zach, now it's in Henry's paper,
[00:39:30.290]but from memory, this again is by sample by load as received from farm operation.
[00:39:36.170]So there's a fair number of samples in there. So I'm, I have a lot of confidence in the mean.
[00:39:41.510]Now you asked the question of, okay, why is it so variable? Do we not know what
[00:39:45.650]we're doing here or whatever? But...
[00:39:47.570]Male Speaker: It's too material.
[00:39:48.570]Yeah.
[00:39:49.570]Male Speaker:
[00:39:50.570]Well, obviously you can tell I've never looked at the CV because I didn't catch that it was
[00:40:05.610]tripled. No, I don't have a good explanation other than, you know, the mean goes up. But
[00:40:10.950]I don't know if it's more consistent or why it would be.
[00:40:17.510]Male Speaker 1: I'm going to repeat this, Zach, for those that are online. I'll try.
[00:40:33.590]Suggesting that as you get drier, especially with kernel processing, you had better outcomes
[00:40:39.070]with kernel processing scores because it did just a better job of probably getting every
[00:40:44.710]kernel and so on.
[00:40:46.450]Female Speaker 1:
[00:40:47.450]I don't know, I probably would wanna see some repeats
[00:40:50.750]of this to say and hang my hat on,
[00:40:53.830]cutting up drier silage makes the NDF fiber,
[00:40:56.590]digestibility less variable, or starch, but it could.
[00:40:59.290]Hadn't really looked at it, to be honest.
[00:41:02.530]I hadn't caught that part.
[00:41:03.830]We did obviously get it at pH.
[00:41:08.250]Lactate was probably good, right?
[00:41:10.770]Acetic acid, you can see all the other numbers.
[00:41:13.410]I just wanted to show you all the information
[00:41:15.230]that we had on it.
[00:41:16.170]And again, these would have been assayed.
[00:41:18.290]I can't blame Henry, 'cause these would have been assayed
[00:41:20.550]by sending them in, right?
[00:41:22.270]They would have been done commercially.
[00:41:24.050]Okay, so what?
[00:41:26.350]So then what we did is, some of you know this,
[00:41:31.930]that I've really tried, we as a program,
[00:41:35.210]have tried to look at feeding normal amounts of silage
[00:41:40.210]and tripling that, or doubling it at least, right?
[00:41:43.590]So if you're a feedlot, which is the audience
[00:41:45.930]I tend to work with a lot.
[00:41:47.930]If I'm a feedlot, and I'm also farming,
[00:41:51.030]and I'm gonna feed silage as a roughage source,
[00:41:53.470]which to me is a no-brainer,
[00:41:55.050]if you can put up silage correctly,
[00:41:56.510]it's a no-brainer to use silage as a roughage source.
[00:41:59.110]But if I'm also farming, if 15% silage is good,
[00:42:03.770]maybe 45 is three times better.
[00:42:05.750]You understand the logic?
[00:42:07.610]And we've done lots of studies and talked about that
[00:42:10.250]in previous silage conferences,
[00:42:11.490]so I'm not gonna get into that.
[00:42:12.670]But I'm just trying to tell you why we looked at,
[00:42:15.690]comparing 15% to 45% silage was because I'm interested
[00:42:22.090]in what's the effect of increasing silage inclusion
[00:42:24.510]for finishing cattle.
[00:42:26.570]The other reason we did that is that if I'm gonna make
[00:42:30.310]some change to silage and I'm using it at 5% in the diet
[00:42:34.810]for finishing cattle, good luck doing research
[00:42:38.110]and finding a difference.
[00:42:40.290]You see my point?
[00:42:41.770]So if I'm feeding silage even at 15% and I put up
[00:42:45.450]really bad silage, you may not notice it in performance.
[00:42:48.730]Does everybody follow the logic?
[00:42:49.690]So that's the other reason why we wanted to have
[00:42:52.430]finishing cattle but we wanted to go to 45% silage inclusion.
[00:42:56.930]And lo and behold, so this is the 37% dry matter silage,
[00:43:03.230]this is the 43% dry matter silage at 15 inclusion
[00:43:08.410]and then the same repeated here at 45.
[00:43:11.330]For those who've had statistics, that's a factorial,
[00:43:15.210]there's no interaction.
[00:43:17.330]So basically, looking at this column,
[00:43:21.390]you can see that conversions were not different
[00:43:26.310]within the inclusion between the two silage dry matters.
[00:43:30.410]Gains were not different statistically.
[00:43:34.170]And intakes, while this one looks a little different,
[00:43:36.970]they look like they might have went up some
[00:43:40.270]with the dryer silage, wasn't significant.
[00:43:43.130]Maybe that should be repeated to see if
[00:43:44.970]cattle eat a little more if it's dryer silage.
[00:43:47.210]But, didn't have a lot there to say dry silage is bad.
[00:43:53.750]Probably should have stopped there.
[00:43:58.510]No.
[00:44:00.590]So the other question then is what about growing calves?
[00:44:05.150]'Cause if we really wanna know if silage is different,
[00:44:07.590]let's do a growing calf study and feed a lot of silage.
[00:44:11.390]So this study here, all of these, again,
[00:44:14.730]this is all published in the same publication.
[00:44:17.390]This study here, the diets are 88% silage.
[00:44:21.230]What's the other 12%?
[00:44:22.770]Basically, it's some bypass protein
[00:44:26.330]and supplement with minerals and so on, right?
[00:44:28.550]So it's a silage diet.
[00:44:30.450]Little bit of protein, in fact,
[00:44:32.030]that's what we were testing some, and then minerals.
[00:44:35.630]So these are 600-weight calves fed for 84 days,
[00:44:40.630]and the ending body weight coming out of that growing program
[00:44:44.490]was 846 for the 37% dry matter,
[00:44:48.770]826 for the 43, clearly less, and statistically significant.
[00:44:53.770]Gains were then obviously, intakes were the same,
[00:44:59.230]gains were lower, which then had a significant change
[00:45:02.450]in the feed conversion.
[00:45:04.050]I do wanna point out, right, again, for all of you
[00:45:07.350]that know I'm a silage fan, that's pretty good conversions
[00:45:11.610]for a growing study and for growing cattle,
[00:45:14.250]which is, again, why I like silage growing programs.
[00:45:17.070]If you get the protein right, I think silage is great
[00:45:19.610]for growing cattle.
[00:45:20.930]Anyway, you can see there's a difference in energy content
[00:45:23.790]that we could calculate from performance.
[00:45:26.150]So I've gotta say that if you look at growing cattle
[00:45:30.310]and all of this information, 43% dry matter silage
[00:45:34.810]has less energy when fed to cattle than 37.
[00:45:38.350]That's what we conclude.
[00:45:40.530]Now.
[00:45:44.010]If we had the cash, and maybe we'll do this,
[00:45:46.190]especially if we have the funding,
[00:45:47.930]we had done 32, 'cause I'm a fan of 37, right?
[00:45:52.930]And I encourage you to start putting up silage at 37,
[00:45:58.850]not at 30 or 32.
[00:46:02.370]Again, some of you know we do this.
[00:46:07.610]This is a lamb digestion study,
[00:46:09.650]'cause we wanna know what was being influenced
[00:46:11.710]by putting up dryer silage.
[00:46:13.770]It's a little easier to use lambs for digestion work
[00:46:16.790]than cattle, and we had the lambs.
[00:46:19.110]So we decided to do that quickly,
[00:46:20.950]and you can see the fiber digestibility was lower.
[00:46:23.450]So I think that dryer silage in a high silage diet,
[00:46:27.270]probably because of fiber digestibility
[00:46:29.730]is what influences that performance.
[00:46:31.930]In finishing cattle, fiber digestibility
[00:46:34.090]is a lot less important.
[00:46:35.870]Inclusions are a lot lower.
[00:46:37.410]Again, dryer silage may not be so bad.
[00:46:42.050]Okay, I think I'm gonna,
[00:46:43.530]oh, this is a study here.
[00:46:46.890]It's actually a growing study.
[00:46:48.730]I'm sorry, I forgot about this one.
[00:46:49.990]This is from the British Journal of Animal Science,
[00:46:54.270]and they looked at 29 to 39% dry matter silage.
[00:46:59.270]They did a growing study.
[00:47:01.410]Their growing studies are a little different.
[00:47:04.090]I don't mean that in a negative way,
[00:47:05.610]but they fed some concentrate and mineral on top of this,
[00:47:10.610]and then they report things a little bit different.
[00:47:13.290]But their conclusion was that as silage got drier,
[00:47:18.170]intakes were not significantly affected,
[00:47:20.430]although you can see the wetter silage looks lower to me.
[00:47:23.870]Gains are obviously not affected.
[00:47:26.170]Conversions were actually a little worse
[00:47:28.490]on the drier silage.
[00:47:30.910]But I'm questioning some of this.
[00:47:32.870]Not a lot of cattle, but I didn't want to hide it from you
[00:47:36.070]in case somebody really wants to do their homework.
[00:47:38.530]I think I'll skip that, although it's on milk production.
[00:47:43.050]Oh, this is that one summary where they looked
[00:47:47.610]at the different silage dry matters.
[00:47:49.970]I had shown you this earlier for composition.
[00:47:52.370]I just want to point out that they don't really see any
[00:47:55.870]differences in milk or fat corrected milk until you get
[00:47:59.990]to real dry silage as well.
[00:48:01.570]So it kind of supports that drier silage,
[00:48:04.210]probably fiber digestibility.
[00:48:06.070]Again, though, this is a dairy cow, which is probably different.
[00:48:08.990]Okay, the last thing which I've emphasized and hopefully you
[00:48:12.810]have emphasized enough, but if you're going to measure shrink,
[00:48:17.390]which I think for any of you that are consulting,
[00:48:19.630]your clients should, for any of you that are producers,
[00:48:22.310]you should measure shrink, and it's very,
[00:48:24.570]very difficult to do.
[00:48:25.670]But if you're going to do it, then take dry matters
[00:48:29.730]and moisture content of the green chop going
[00:48:32.150]into the bunker, because I have a lot of producers
[00:48:35.830]who've told me our silage shrink is only 10 percent.
[00:48:39.270]And I'm telling you, on an as-fed basis,
[00:48:42.570]it's probably 10 percent.
[00:48:44.390]But if you go through the math on this slide, 10 percent shrink
[00:48:49.070]on an as-is basis is probably more like 12 to 15 percent
[00:48:52.750]on a dry matter basis.
[00:48:53.770]It depends on how much wetter it gets while it's going
[00:48:56.050]through the fermentation.
[00:48:56.910]Okay. Wrap up.
[00:49:00.770]Corn plant changes in dry matter relative
[00:49:03.570]to the black layer, which is maturity.
[00:49:05.630]The plant part has lower dry matter than the grain,
[00:49:09.530]and the blend is obviously what you're getting with the silage.
[00:49:12.330]Green chop is a little higher in dry matter, and we lose
[00:49:15.750]about that one percentage unit, I believe, during ensiling.
[00:49:18.910]In general, the fiber content is constant during this silage
[00:49:25.530]harvest window, but the fiber digestibility appears
[00:49:28.770]to go down, and that's pretty dramatic,
[00:49:30.930]especially as it gets dry.
[00:49:32.310]Starch increases, and that's pretty straightforward
[00:49:35.210]because of grain increasing.
[00:49:36.670]I think there's got to be some more work on what happens
[00:49:39.390]to starch digestibility in the beef applications.
[00:49:42.090]As that drier silage gets put up, I think your window
[00:49:45.790]of harvest is in that 35 to 40.
[00:49:48.130]Rick, is that the same recommendation from 30 years ago
[00:49:52.670]or 50 years ago?
[00:49:53.550]I'm picking on him.
[00:49:55.390]So what have we learned?
[00:49:57.670]Probably not much.
[00:49:58.570]It's still the same harvest window of 35 to 40% dry matter.
[00:50:01.830]Is that fair to everybody?
[00:50:02.910]But I've tried to justify a little bit of that,
[00:50:06.810]and I think, though, avoiding wetter
[00:50:09.090]and obviously avoiding real dry is small.
[00:50:12.070]My only challenge to you,
[00:50:15.070]and maybe throughout the day this can be discussed,
[00:50:17.630]is that if you are going to target 35,
[00:50:19.730]I'm going to say target 38,
[00:50:22.350]because then you might start by the time you get to 35.
[00:50:24.850]If you target 35, you'll be starting back here at 32,
[00:50:27.890]and I think that's too wet.
[00:50:29.770]You're hauling way too much water.
[00:50:31.390]You're going to get leachates.
[00:50:32.370]I don't think it's necessary.
[00:50:34.410]But the last challenge we haven't solved,
[00:50:36.850]and that is that if you're a producer
[00:50:38.570]and you've got a field of corn,
[00:50:40.310]and I tell you,
[00:50:41.630]put it up at 38% dry matter,
[00:50:43.330]you should ask me,
[00:50:45.410]okay, how do I know when it's 38% dry matter?
[00:50:47.270]And we do not have a great way
[00:50:49.150]to do that today.
[00:50:51.270]So that's my challenge.
[00:50:52.590]And if there is, and somebody knows,
[00:50:54.250]and maybe there's technologies coming,
[00:50:55.770]et cetera, et cetera, great.
[00:50:57.790]One of the things that we do
[00:50:59.310]is that we just,
[00:51:00.250]we go out and we sample the plant,
[00:51:02.430]and we chip it and dry it
[00:51:04.290]and estimate it that way.
[00:51:05.810]I think everybody knows this,
[00:51:08.690]but all of our previous conferences are online.
[00:51:11.470]Angel, you and I were talking earlier, right?
[00:51:13.850]A lot of traffic on these still,
[00:51:15.870]and so it's great to see
[00:51:17.230]that people are still using
[00:51:18.230]some of that information.
[00:51:19.370]Been good topics throughout every year,
[00:51:21.610]and hopefully today's a great day.
[00:51:23.890]Appreciate you being here
[00:51:24.970]and happy to take any questions, Kip.
[00:51:26.570]There's questions?
[00:51:27.750]If there are questions,
[00:51:34.290]remember, online, no one...
[00:51:40.970]You got to love it.
[00:51:42.010]It does cut off his mic, Mark,
[00:51:49.390]when the...
[00:51:50.530]I don't know why.
[00:51:51.290]Alan, it's on.
[00:51:54.670]Attendee: Okay, so Galen,
[00:51:56.890]basically you're saying here
[00:51:59.670]finishing diets doesn't really matter
[00:52:02.310]much?
[00:52:04.810]Yeah.
[00:52:05.330]Other than can you get it packed
[00:52:07.850]if you get drier?
[00:52:09.810]Right.
[00:52:10.470]On growing diets,
[00:52:11.650]there is an impact getting too dry.
[00:52:14.510]What about your beloved
[00:52:18.090]high silage finisher diets?
[00:52:20.850]Yeah, so everybody heard the question
[00:52:25.130]and so I won't repeat it.
[00:52:27.010]Yeah, I think
[00:52:28.410]those are what Terry
[00:52:31.350]used to always say is tweeners, right?
[00:52:33.150]They're between.
[00:52:33.770]The only evidence we have right now
[00:52:37.450]is that 37 and 43,
[00:52:39.010]I showed that,
[00:52:40.170]for that 45% diet,
[00:52:41.450]did not appear to influence things at all.
[00:52:43.790]There was no interaction,
[00:52:44.830]and even numerically,
[00:52:45.830]it looked like it acted the same
[00:52:47.730]as if there was 15.
[00:52:48.550]So my conclusion today is
[00:52:50.450]that you get above 50%,
[00:52:53.050]then you start going to growing,
[00:52:54.510]50% silage in the diet,
[00:52:56.430]you start targeting growing calves,
[00:52:58.570]37%, 38%, whatever that number is,
[00:53:04.870]probably some more work if you want.
[00:53:07.130]We need to have in that wetter silage
[00:53:09.390]to compare to,
[00:53:10.150]So the question is,
[00:53:16.770]is that the size of the animal
[00:53:18.270]and is that interacting with this response?
[00:53:20.630]That's plausible.
[00:53:21.770]In fairness, to point out,
[00:53:24.730]the finishing work that we have
[00:53:28.010]that I showed at the 15 and 45,
[00:53:30.550]those were big yearlings.
[00:53:31.690]They wouldn't have any trouble eating, right?
[00:53:34.270]So I think what Alan's getting at
[00:53:36.290]is does gut fill influence this
[00:53:39.890]and become a limitation?
[00:53:41.010]And it certainly would
[00:53:42.690]if fiber digestibility is negatively impacted.
[00:53:45.230]So I think some work has to happen,
[00:53:47.490]but I think you'll stay within the guardrails
[00:53:50.890]if you say dryness probably affects
[00:53:53.570]growing calf diets more.
[00:53:55.690]Could be fiber digestibility
[00:53:57.930]and intake related, absolutely.
[00:53:59.710]And probably less impactful
[00:54:02.930]on finishing cattle.
[00:54:03.690]But at the end of the day,
[00:54:05.370]and again, Galen wants,
[00:54:06.870]he's talked to me numerous times about this,
[00:54:09.630]if it won't store,
[00:54:11.010]you shouldn't do it anyway, right?
[00:54:13.230]And that's true.
[00:54:14.190]I understand that.
[00:54:15.210]So I'll tell you my recommendation is,
[00:54:18.810]which I don't know exactly what that number is,
[00:54:21.270]my recommendation,
[00:54:21.890]wherever you think you're packed perfectly
[00:54:23.890]at the right densities,
[00:54:25.770]as dry as you can get that silage
[00:54:27.910]and still do that,
[00:54:28.730]that's my target.
[00:54:29.770]Which to me, a fair recommendation
[00:54:31.910]is start putting it up at 37% or 38% dry matter.
[00:54:34.670]And get it done before it gets to 40%.
[00:54:39.370]Yes, sir.
[00:54:40.550]Yes.
[00:54:41.150]Attendee: What's your concern on nitrate
[00:54:44.310]when you do it too early?
[00:54:45.870]Will it ferment better in a bag
[00:54:48.830]than in a pile?
[00:54:49.650]So you don't get the nitrate poisoning?
[00:54:52.430]Yep.
[00:54:53.090]What is your concern on that?
[00:54:54.350]How long do you have to wait
[00:54:55.710]before you can feed after you put it up?
[00:54:57.550]Yeah, so that's a good question.
[00:54:59.350]And maybe start in general about nitrate.
[00:55:02.830]So I'm not the expert on it,
[00:55:05.510]but what I understand is that in siling,
[00:55:09.110]does decrease the nitrates by 30% to 50%
[00:55:14.590]of what the original green chop material was.
[00:55:17.330]So that's kind of what's known and has been measured.
[00:55:21.310]So if you have high nitrates in green chop,
[00:55:24.570]whether that's small grains or corn silage or whatever,
[00:55:27.470]in siling should cut that, I'm going to say in about half,
[00:55:30.850]but be a little conservative there.
[00:55:32.850]Your question though was, okay, that's all fine and good,
[00:55:37.650]but does bagging
[00:55:38.850]or bunkering influence that or maybe dry matter of the silage?
[00:55:42.610]I do not know the answer to that.
[00:55:45.850]My guess is, is that fermentation, we probably,
[00:55:50.770]there's others in the room who know more about fermentation.
[00:55:53.250]My simple-minded approach is, is that if it fermented
[00:55:57.490]and you got lactic acid where you want it and the pH is
[00:56:01.750]where you want it, which I think we have good targets for,
[00:56:04.750]then you will get that nitrate consumed during fermentation.
[00:56:08.590]So, if bagging would give you a better outcome on your silage,
[00:56:15.190]which I don't know if there's good evidence for,
[00:56:16.870]then it would help nitrate.
[00:56:18.350]But I don't know if there's good evidence that if it's bagged well
[00:56:21.370]and it's bunkered in a bunker silo well,
[00:56:24.590]I think you'll have the same result on nitrates.
[00:56:27.190]Quality of fermentation.
[00:56:29.750]Yeah, quality of fermentation, not the storage percent.
[00:56:32.210]You can have bad bag and you can have good bag and vice versa.
[00:56:34.810]Attendee: What do you consider waiting period then?
[00:56:38.330]Oh, waiting period, you know I have more fermentation experience with grains,
[00:56:44.770]but in general, right, all of the data out there and the measurements,
[00:56:48.410]at least in mini silage and so on, 21 to 28 days.
[00:56:51.830]My recommendation is wait at least 28 days.
[00:56:53.630]I will add though that it does continue to ferment just slowly.
[00:57:02.130]So silage in August that was put up last year that we're feeding now,
[00:57:08.070]is more fermentable when I feed it than silage last September,
[00:57:14.650]October when I started feeding it.
[00:57:16.650]It's just not very rapid across nine months.
[00:57:20.610]Other questions?
[00:57:25.090]Mike, who stole your mic?
[00:57:30.110]All right, that's fine.
[00:57:32.930]Just tell, I'll repeat it, I'll repeat it.
[00:57:37.810]Yeah, all of our, so Kip's question was,
[00:57:46.230]how do we store that silage that I'm showing,
[00:57:49.250]the growing cattle and the digestibility data
[00:57:52.490]from this University of Nebraska work,
[00:57:54.050]Hilser work.
[00:57:54.970]All of that was bagged.
[00:57:57.390]And as I alluded to, that was mostly because
[00:58:00.350]of the quantity of materials we wanted to put up
[00:58:02.850]both ways, and that I didn't want us
[00:58:07.550]putting up dry silage poorly in a bunker
[00:58:10.050]to be the only reason we'd get a difference
[00:58:12.010]in performance.
[00:58:12.570]So I wanted to use as pristine of environment
[00:58:14.810]as I could to begin with, and then if it worked,
[00:58:17.510]you guys would all figure out how to store it.
[00:58:20.070]Or we would.
[00:58:21.430]Yeah, that'd be a nice thing to compare now
[00:58:28.830]is do we do that, and maybe back to Alan's question,
[00:58:32.190]then even in finishing cattle, would it be poor?
[00:58:34.390]Those are all good questions.
[00:58:37.290]I'm excited to answer those.
[00:58:39.250]That's all it takes.
[00:58:41.570]Yeah, so Kip's point and comment and question is,
[00:59:07.030]I don't know which one of those it is,
[00:59:08.190]is that we're talking mid,
[00:59:11.310]I'm always, right, thinking about Midwest,
[00:59:14.450]eastern Nebraska, Nebraska-type situations,
[00:59:17.170]which isn't the whole perspective.
[00:59:20.130]And so we do feed a lot of wet byproducts,
[00:59:24.550]whether that be sweet bran, gluten feeds,
[00:59:27.410]or probably more common even is distillers,
[00:59:30.390]grains, wet or modified.
[00:59:31.510]So we have a lot of moisture in our diets anyway,
[00:59:33.670]which, by the way, doesn't bother me at all.
[00:59:35.110]And if you're in a growing,
[00:59:37.010]growing calf situation
[00:59:38.590]and you're feeding high silage levels,
[00:59:41.510]come see some of our work
[00:59:44.250]and look at other people's works.
[00:59:45.610]There's a major opportunity to get protein response
[00:59:49.950]by feeding distillers in combination with silage.
[00:59:52.790]Okay, so I take distillers for granted
[00:59:56.590]because of the higher UP content.
[00:59:57.990]Works great.
[00:59:58.590]Your question was,
[00:59:59.930]what about all those other places that don't have it, right,
[01:00:02.130]or access?
[01:00:02.690]Well, first off, you do have dry distillers access,
[01:00:05.810]but it may not be economic
[01:00:06.990]and then secondly,
[01:00:08.910]yeah, one of the intrinsic benefits of silage,
[01:00:13.130]especially in the good old days, right,
[01:00:15.170]as used as a roughage source in feedlot diets,
[01:00:17.470]is it brought moisture in,
[01:00:18.750]helped hold the diet together.
[01:00:20.370]Think about it.
[01:00:21.550]In the old days,
[01:00:22.270]finding ways to get moisture in the diet
[01:00:25.250]was what was done.
[01:00:26.950]Today, some people worry we got too much water in the diet.
[01:00:31.110]You see the difference?
[01:00:32.190]And so, yeah,
[01:00:32.990]I think if you're in a location where diets are dry,
[01:00:34.990]silage is an excellent way to,
[01:00:36.970]get diets mixed and held together.
[01:00:38.590]Yeah.
[01:00:39.850]Thank you.

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