FEED & NUTRITION

Corn silage is an excellent source of high-yielding and consistent feed that some consider the most important crop for cows. This makes it important to understand how silage performance is affected by agronomic practices such as plant density.

For dairy nutritionists and dairy managers, it’s frustrating to learn that the ration delivered to cows is not always the ration that was formulated. A diet can’t do its job when it’s not correctly mixed, delivered or managed.

When cows just aren’t performing the way they need to be, the ration often takes the blame. Your nutritionist may need to make some adjustments, but before they do, it might be a good idea to take a look at what is happening to that ration when the formulation moves from theory to practice.

Have you ever wondered if those additives you put in the feed at such low inclusion rates actually make it to each cow?

The goal of ensiling a forage crop is to conserve as much as possible of the nutrient and dry matter (DM) content in the crop at the time of harvest.

Non-nutritive feed components have become a lightning rod topic over the past six to 12 months. A promising growing season in 2016 yielded less than desirable quality and some contaminants in many regions.