Surviving when weather turns against you means thinking outside the box. It might be hot now, but this wet, cool weather held on for long and has now put normal planting and harvesting into the far edges of the bell-shaped curve of normal results.
But remember this: You still have options.
Not all corn is planted, and fields are still too wet in many areas. Some cornfields may not see great yields. If you’re a dairy farmer, this may be an opportunity for you to buy that standing corn right out of the field. It may not be the highly digestible stuff you normally grow, but it will make more milk than the sticks and dirt clods you are facing now.
It is critical to watch the milk line and harvest grain varieties slightly earlier to ensure full kernel digestibility and to maximize stalk fiber digestion.
If hayfields are not harvested, alfalfa is past its optimum. As long as most of the stand has not significantly lodged, you can use a sneaky trick to get better-quality forage. Most alfalfa is at peak quality at about 32 inches. If it is at 40 inches, raise the cutter bar so that you only take off the top 32 inches. This can significantly increase feed quality and digestion.
Unfortunately, this does not work with grass, so just cut it at the normal 4-inch height. Most grass fields should be let go until after the legumes are harvested.
The next option is to switch to a shorter-season corn at a slightly higher population. The problem with this is that most short-season varieties may have already been snapped up by other farmers.
My secondary concern is that you will switch to desperation planting when most of the field is still too wet for normal traffic. Many years like this go from wet to dry very quickly. The corn that’s been mudded in will have a shallow root system that can potentially reduce yields and grain content. It then gets hammered when it turns dry.
This is why it is always better to wait for the right soil conditions before planting.
Don’t rest on these alternatives
We now come to the traditional “season-is-in-the-toilet” options. These are the various sorghum, sorghum-sudan, sudangrass and pearl millet varieties.
Don’t worry. From my own experience and the experience of other farmers I know, these can be viable alternatives for producing high-energy forage to support both beef and dairy.
Only brown midrib varieties should be planted as they supply the highest fiber digestibility, which supplies the most usable nutrients. The first and most promising replacement for corn is BMR male sterile forage sorghum. We have been working with this crop for several years, and what we learned has greatly increased its success as a primary forage for dairy cows.
Last year, in dry conditions, it blew the doors off corn silage in terms of yield. In a carefully replicated study, replacing corn silage with properly grown and harvested BMR male sterile forage sorghum both increased milk per cow and significantly increased components due to the high sugar content (levels commonly over 25% on a dry matter basis).
It is also cheaper and more effective than adding molasses. You should wait five to six weeks after heading before harvest to raise the stored sugar levels.
Like any crop, there are key steps for success. An essential step is the right population and row width. The old farmer’s tale is to plant it at 15 to 20 pounds an acre, which at the average pounds of seed an acre will result in 225,000 seeds, or less than 1 inch between plants on a 30-inch row.
The story is that it increases yield, and the smaller stems are more digestible. This is not true! The result is a crop that falls over before harvest. And the smaller stems have a huge increase in percent rind (outside rim of the stem with high lignin), which significantly decreases digestibility of the forage.
Here are my tips for success: First, plant 4 pounds of seed an acre (60,000 seeds an acre). Check your drill that it can plant that low. If it can’t plant 4 pounds an acre, plug every other hole to allow the star drive to stay open enough to let the whole seed through.
What we have found is that as we increased spacing in the row, the sorghum stalks got as big as corn, and the lodging issues decreased or disappeared. Yield and digestible fiber were still maintained.
Our hypothesis is that at 7.5-inch row spacing, between 60,000 and 70,000 seeds an acre is optimum. This is nearly equidistant spacing to maximize yield, quality and standability while shading the ground to prevent weed growth.
Spacing within the row is critical. You need smooth, not accordion-type drop tubes, or you will have uneven dumped planting that lodges. If you don’t have a drill or yours cannot plant correctly, you can use a 15-inch corn planter with sorghum plates. You still need that in-row spacing to prevent thin lodging stalks, and that is achieved at 60,000 seeds an acre.
With GPS and a 15-inch corn planter, you can plant a 15-inch row, and with a 7.5-inch drawbar offset at 30,000 seeds an acre, double back splitting the rows to get accurately planted 7.5-inch results in 60,000 seeds.
If you don’t have a 15-inch corn planter, then use a 30-inch row planter at 30,000 seeds an acre and offset the drawbar 15 inches to get 15-inch rows when you double back. The 15-inch yielded less than the 7.5-inch, but it still yielded a respectable 20 tons of silage an acre. I would not suggest planting in 30-inch rows, as in my replicated trials it yielded much less than the narrow-drilled rows.
There are several varieties I have grown. Keep in mind that I don’t sell seed, nor do I get any cut from what you buy. I am only passing on my experiences. I make these mistakes, so you don’t have to.
NO PROCESSING NEEDED: Without a fertile seed head, all the nutrition in BMR male sterile forage sorghum is stored in the forage. The eight-week post-heading harvest date allows enhanced nutrition to build in the crop, so it supports nearly the same milk as corn silage. Without seed, there is no need to buy and operate kernel processers.
For north of the Mason-Dixon line, the shortest-season type is from S&W seed. Farther south, Alta seed performs very well. There are good, longer-season male sterile varieties, but you must look and ask questions.
Once you get past the start of July in northern areas and the middle of July in southern areas, you are starting to run out of season. At this point, a BMR sudangrass will provide a high-quality crop at a lower yield potential. The finer stems allow for round bale wrapping.
BMR sorghum-sudangrass is normally higher yielding, but of lower quality. There are some varieties that have the same or more energy as the sudangrass. Both are drilled at a higher seeding rate, especially if more than one cut is taken. If only one cut is planned, then plant the lower seed rate to reduce the potential for lodging.
BMR pearl millet has been a top producer in our trials. It is a wet forage that needs some drying.
For all these crops, the higher plant moisture and higher sugar levels allow complete fermentation by applying a homolactic inoculant at harvest. This is critical. The sugar and bacteria quickly drop the forage pH, eliminating Clostridia and butyric formation.