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More alfalfa in ‘24, but quality lower

A Wisconsin dairy farmer says this year’s increased moisture has been a mixed blessing for his crops.  Jack Herricks from Cashton tells Brownfield there’s already quite a bit of forage in the bunk. “We have not started corn silage, but harvesting alfalfa this year has been a real treat because we’ve already harvested substantially more with three crops than we got last year with four.”

Herricks says the early wetness held back his silage corn crop but the alfalfa grew quickly, and even though rain prevented timely harvesting, his choice of alfalfa varieties paid off. “Weed control was good, and with that HarvXtra, our quality was still in that 170 relative feed quality range, even though we harvested about ten days later than we wanted to.”

Ahead of corn silage chopping, Herricks says 80% of his corn is in good to excellent condition, and harvest will just start later this year. “Our agronomist right now is projecting our corn silage harvest to start September 30th compared to last year when we starteed September 10^th.”

Herricks milks about 600 cows and grows his own feed.  His biggest concern is if the late corn silage harvest will prevent the following cover crop from taking off before the first frost.