West Central Nebraska - Sandhills | Needing help pricing earlage, and deciding between chopping sileage or earlage. I am a cow/calf guy , we put up a lot of somewhat poorer quality hay and alfalfa and have access to wet distillers, so in the spring, we feed ground hay/alfalfa/wet DDG ration from a large mixer wagon. It looks as if we will not be able to put up any hay this year due to extreme drought conditions (we have some Meadow Hay leftover, but are looking at possibly needing Hay towards the end of summer or at the very least next spring. We graze Corn stalks throughout the winter) , and hay prices in our country are soaring to the point where they won’t be feasible to purchase. Corn is still relatively cheap and I have a farmer who is considering letting us chop one of his fields for silage or earlage. I’ve never fed either before, but it seems like it might make sense.
Sileage in our area is 9 times price of corn. With corn at $4.18 and paying custom chopper and trucks it works out to $55/ton in a packed pile at my place, or $157/ton dry matter. I would likely have to plant rye after chopping,
It’s a sandy pivot
I can’t find anyone who knows how to price earlage? Or how that would compare to silage? For reference it’s 210 bushel an acre yield on 130 irrigated acres. Chopper is $150/acre and $2.50/ton packing.
The advantages I can see to Earlage is less Trucking, farmers happy because there’s residual, I don’t have to plant rye, and it’s more nutrient dense. Disadvantages I can see to earlage is I don’t know whether or not it’s cheaper or more expensive because I haven’t been able to price it and I need to still have roughage to feed along with it. I’m assuming. I’d appreciate any and all advice on the matter. I want it to work for us but it’s new to me and my corn farmer and want to keep him happy. TIA!
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Sileage vs earlage, input from the farmers
