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Small Grain Silage Wheat, barley, rye and oat silage make excellent summer roughages. I suggest the plants to be cut in the boot or early flower stage to get a good pack. The feed needs to be wilted to 70-75% moisture. Pack well and always cover with plastic. Small grain silages can also be green chopped and add a succulent palatable feed to any ration. Our customers, when making wheat silage, feed the fresh green chop and then continue to feed the material rather than wait for the ensiling process to be completed. This tactic is used to prevent wastage. The window for opportunity for harvest is short. When the plants begin to get a hollow stem, the value of the feed is reduced. Do not let the plants go to the soft dough stage of the grain. The energy will be severely reduced. Cutting early is better than cutting late. Green Chop Alfalfa Consider alfalfa green chop in your program. It makes a luscious, high energy forage. Start cutting in the bud stage. The energy value of the early cut forage is up to 200% better than late cut hay. The protein credit in the ration can add an extra economic dimension. Fresh alfalfa also contains plant estrogens that may enhance gain and feed efficiency. Preventing bloat. The use of Rumensin helps control bloat problems when feeding green chop alfalfa. If Rumensin is not fed, then be cautious to cut the alfalfa after the morning dew has evaporated. One way is to cut in the afternoon and stock pile the forage until the next morning's feeding. This tactic helps control bloat. Caution is needed to clean up the feed each day to prevent the green chop from going out of condition. Self-feeding wagons are a method to haul the forage to the cattle and thereby control the harvesting of the forage rather than grazing. Green Chop Grass or Grass Silage Grass forage as part of a feedlots' grow or finishing program is a potential valuable summer feed. When making grass silage, the forage needs to be wilted before ensiling. The storage of grass silages is critical to make the program work. The forage must be covered properly. If used in a finish ration, the grass silage may be as much as 75% moisture, but for grow rations with high intakes of silage, the moisture needs to be dryer. Wetter silages will need to be diluted out with dry grain or roughages to get top gains. Since managed intensive grazing operations need to keep the forage lush for the pasture operation, there are times when excess forage must be cut as hay or silage. We have seen this excess forage stored as silage. Then it was used to supplement pastures during dry periods. Forage Sorghum and Sudan Green Chop Forage made as green chop and silage is a much better feed than if cut for hay. Sorghum feeds must be dry if cut for hay. This leads to late cut forage that is lower in energy and protein. We have some analysis of sorghum forage hay that is below 5% crude protein on a dry basis. The feed is often palatable but is low in energy and protein. The solution is to make the crop into green chop and silage when it is immature, high in energy and higher in protein. |
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