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Southern IA | Seems a lot of guys are chopping this drought silage. Having a tough time with this decision. Combining 50 bu corn is still $400 worth of corn then rolling up the stalks still puts stores the roughage for less cost than chopping. Seems it is going to be hard to get silage chopped and bagged for less than $15/ton. If it is 35% DM, that is $45/ton just in harvesting cost, where baling should be pretty easy to do for $20-25/ton with our own equipment, then can limit feed back a minimal protein supplement with the stalks to keep the cows in shape until calving, as silage is way overkill on cows. Silage really fits well with backgrounding, but then is not energy dense enough for finishing. Seems maybe we are in a bad spot now that all the decent hay fields have been planted to corn and all these byproducts have shot to the moon. | |
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Rolling up corn stalks or chopping silage
