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Check silage corn hybrid pedigrees for total plant digestibility and milk yield values before planting. Cows perform best on top 'dairy corn'.

April 18, 2014

2 Min Read

Your 2014 seed corn bags may already be stacked on the truck or trailer. But while you're waiting for planting season to arrive, check your corn hybrid pedigrees a little closer – especially if you plan to feed it as corn silage to dairy cows. Your cows will thank you for it.

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Dig out hybrid digestibility and milk yield data from 2013 hybrid trials. Hybrid selection has greater influence on silage quality than other management practices, suggests Cornell University Crops and Soil Sciences Agronomist Bill Cox. In most growing seasons, it has more influence on silage quality as a single management factor than planting date, plant density, row spacing, N rate and timing, harvest date or harvest cutting height.

But Cox goes a step deeper: Stover fiber digestibility is one of the most important hybrid characteristics affecting silage quality. And, some animal nutritionists believe stalk starch concentrations are no longer adequate in assessing corn silage quality. Starch digestibility of the grain is far more important."

Seed genetics improving
Seed companies released brown midrib hybrids offer dairy farmers hybrids with high fiber digestibility. Today's newer BMR hybrids have less of a yield penalty and stand reasonably well except in severe wind storms, points out Cox.

In the future, he predicts, seed companies will release hybrids also having higher starch digestibility. You'll have a choice of selecting hybrids with both high fiber and high starch digestibility. "Nevertheless," he adds, "we also must evaluate the agronomic performance, including stand emergence under cool conditions, lodging tolerance, and yield, as well as silage quality of these new hybrids."

That's why hybrids must be evaluated under "local" growing conditions. In Northern New York, for example, Cox and fellow agronomist Jerry Cherney collaborated with farmers to evaluate 37 hybrids in St. Lawrence County at the Greenwood Dairy Farm in Madrid and 39 hybrids in Jefferson County at Robbins Farms in Sackets Harbor.

All the plots were planted on May 2 or 3 at 36,000 plants per acre to achieve 32,000 to 34,000 harvest populations. Both sites were well-manured dairy sites, and received no side-dressed nitrogen.

When averaged across maturity groups, average silage yields increased approximately 1.5 tons per acre at Madrid and approximately 0.5 tons per acre at Sackets Harbor with each 5-day increase in relative maturity. That's why hybrids are compared within the same relative maturity groups.

Hybrids were considered exceptional performers if the calculated milk yield exceeded the average of their respective RM group by more than 5%.

The 2013 Corn Silage Hybrid Trials report is posted at www.nnyagdev.org. It includes comparative silage yields and milk-per-ton values for the recommended hybrids. 

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