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Traverse City MI | I have a similar question as the one below but I didn't want to hijack his thread. We have a pretty decent hay market here and I would like to feed corn silage and sell the hay but I'm not sure how to value the corn silage. Average corn yield is 80-120. We're feeding 13 brood cows and 16 finishers. I am thinking I using an 8x100 bag to store the feed. Would 10ton an acre be unreasonable for decet corn? Using my math I'm money ahead to sell the hay and chop the corn but that's if I valued the corn silage right. How do you guys figure the value of corn silage? |
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West Central Iowa | to add to ADAM's question......how do you value any feedstuff (hay, grass, corn) including WHEN do you set that value? The timing one uses to set the value on a feed is likely just as important as the reasoning one uses to establish value. |
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Fort Morgan, CO | When we buy silage, we usually make a reasonable offer as well as give them the option of getting paid based on 6.5 times the average of the Friday closings of September corn. So if corn averaged 8 bucks, it'll be $52 plus whatever it cost you to chop it, haul it, store it, etc.
Also, I'd venture to guess that you'd probably get from 10-20 tons/acre. Hope this helps. |
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New Mexico | lbs of wet sileage to replace 1 lb of hay. hay is dry feed sileage is 60 to 65% h2o as fed.
Edited by Markwright 9/19/2012 12:03
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Traverse City MI | So in effect if I needed 150 tons of hay I would need 450 tons of silage? If the silage going in was 60% then i should have 40% dry matter that would equal 60 tons correct? Sorry for the questions we have never fed silage before. |
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Driftless SW Wisconsin | I am not very familiar at all with feeding beef cows silage. However I did purchase a couple cows from a nearby operation where the cows had been on the same silage ration as some beef steers he was finishing.
What I do know is that the physical appearance of those cows changed dramatically from being on sileage when I purchased them to their appearance several months later after being on good hay. They went from being what I would call just sloppy fat to much leaner and tighter, more muscular looking.
My conclusion from this limited experience would be that hay and sileage are not really the same thing when being fed to beef cows. I would be also concerned about feeding a very rich sileage, especially at certain stages of pregnancy, so it does not produce too large calves and calving problems, just as feeding too much corn to pregnant cows has caused calving problems.
I think beef cows look much better and likely have fewer calving problems on hay rather than close to 100% silage. fwiw
Jim at Dawn
Edited by Jim 9/19/2012 14:55
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NC Indiana | I'm gonna say that's way more silage than you will need/get fed and you will need some hay or stalks to mix in to balance silage. |
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Western Iowa | Jim
Would the cows improvement in condition have more to do with yardage than feed? Just thinking out loud here, but most guys I know that feed cows silage are drylotting them in fairly small yards. Get them out where they can strut there stuff and still have good feed can really make them shine up........
Is that possible? |
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sc ia | Markwright - 9/19/2012 10:59
take 3 lbs of wet sileage to replace 1 lb of hay. hay is dry feed sileage is 60 to 65% h2o as fed.
So instead of feeding my cows 30 lbs. of hay I should feed them 90 lbs. of silage? |
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Driftless SW Wisconsin | Could very well be or a combination of the two. They were in a yard and silage when I bought them in summer although they had been on pasture earlier. the word that kept coming to mind to describe their condition at the time was "greasy". But they have both turned out to be very good moderate size cows doing well in my system. Jim at Dawn |
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New Mexico | w sileage. the broom sweeps the rumen.
and it does take bout 90 lbs wet sileage to replace 30 lbs of hay as you mention. |
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Silage vs Hay for beef cattle?
