Tom

Winter forage is a mental and management change in crop rotations. Farmers normally focus on crops in the spring and summer, and the season is finished in their mind when the last corn silage is harvested or combined. Field management over winter is mostly by neglect and a place to dump manure. Winter triticale forage has changed that. Harvested in the spring at flag leaf stage has higher milk-producing ability than timely first-cut alfalfa. It is harvested in one cut, not 5 or 6 cuttings throughout the summer. An increasing number of farms are instituting this as a holistic summer/winter rotation. Summer crops are corn or forage sorghum, while winter crops ON THE SAME ACREAGE are winter triticale for forage. This can directly increase the total dry matter yield by 25-35% from the same acreage.

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https://advancedagsys.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/May-2026-Sorghum.pdf

Most corn is in the ground. Fields that were weather-caused fallow can still produce a very high-quality forage from sorghum.
Sorghum is planted after corn because the soil has to be warmer than for corn for rapid ger-mination. Thus, planting after early winter triti-cale and haylage harvest gets those jobs out of the way and gives time for the soil to warm. I have planted into warm soil with a rain immediately after, and the sorghum was all up in 2 days. I planted in warm soil and did not watch the weath-er forecast, and the field was bare two weeks after, as the cold rain that followed planting killed all the germinating seeds.
Corn seed is $180/acre or more. Sorghum planted at the correct population is $20/acre. This is a major savings. Sorghum kills corn rootworm, so the extra cost for rootworm control is not needed. Deer pressure is canceled as they hide in the crop and come out to eat the neighbor’s corn. It does not get the corn diseases, and so far we don’t have fungicide sprays for forage sorghum

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Traditional haylage is cut directly to narrow windrows; allowed to set for 2 – 3 days drying, and then chopped. It is dry as baled hay on the outside and wet as fresh mowed on the inside. This appears practical, but it flies in the face of how forages dry for silage and ex-acts a high price in digestible components you have lost. The farms using this traditional system are making haylage by composting methods.
Silage does not dry the same as hay. The factors that affect the drying of forages are assumed to be the same from start to finish. This is not true. Drying occurs in three phases. Phase I is a very rapid loss of moisture down to 60 – 65% moisture (35 to 40% dry matter), the level at which silage is made. Phase II is a slower process, down to approximately 40% moisture. Phase III is the longest phase with moisture levels ultimately safe for storing dry hay.

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Winter Forage: Harvesting for High Milk Production
Harvest: DO NOT HARVEST AT BOOT STAGE. This is about a week late and
significantly decreases the digestibility and milk produced. It was OK in the 1980’s when 60
lbs. of milk/cow/day was considered good. Today, 90 lbs./cow/day is considered normal,
and the digestibility of the forage is critical both for supporting the healthier, more profitable,
high forage diets and the amount of milk the cows are producing today. This earlier, on-time
harvest will slightly decrease

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There are many forage experts in the industry. Unfortunately, a vast number are “silo smart”. They have deep knowledge about a small slice of the agriculture industry producing forage, but not enough to step back and see the way quality forage production interacts in a holistic system on the farm. They missed the impact of many of the in-between steps that significantly affect the outcome for their products and for the farm. It took me several years when I started 50 years ago, before I learned to approach it from both the production and consumption ends, see the system, and managing the processes affecting it.

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Research on optimum management for high winter forage quality has shown that nitrogen plays a key role in both the fall and spring growth and protein. Fall nitrogen is critical to maximize fall tillering (sets spring yield potential) and is applied at planting, so that management time has passed. Spring is when nitrogen (and critical sulfur) is applied for maximum yield and high crude protein. This is specifically for winter triticale. Our replicated research has found that increasing the nitrogen on winter rye will simply mean more of the crop is flat on the ground at harvest. Winter triticale is 2/3 as tall as rye but many more tillers produce a thicker stand and higher yields without lodging

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For many, this was the year they would like to forget.  Every time you turned around, the weather was against you.  But you still need forage for the animals.   This month, we turn to the earliest quality forage you can make.

Our winter triticale forage research and development started 30 years ago when it was a mediocre after-thought forage of 1.5 – 2.0 tons of dry matter.  Since then, our research has produced a forage of higher digestibility than early, first-cut alfalfa.  This can mean 9.5 lbs. more milk from the same dry matter.  Farmers report that the high digestibility eliminates the “summer slump” in hot weather.

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As mentioned in the June newsletter, at this point, a one cut of BMR sorghum-Sudan, or Sudan grass, or Pearl Millet, can give you highly digestible forage at the end of September. In my tests, we have harvested 2 to 3 tons of very decent forage, even though it was planted in mid-July with a warm fall.  An overlooked crop is BMR pearl millet. Other researchers and I have found that pearl millets have very high feed quality. In our replicated study, the grazing corn was 12.9% crude protein, the sorghum-Sudan was 14.2%; and the BMR pearl millet was 20% crude protein. The energy was similar (very high) between the BMR grazing corn, BMR sorghum-Sudan, and BMR pearl millet. All three had very high plant sugars. The pearl millet does not have prussic acid management issues. It yields very well in late summer. Pearl millet has thinner stems that may be easier to round bale for wrapping. If you are looking at grazing, be careful, as it is so rich that it can cause bloat.

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“A drought will scare a man to death; a flood will starve him”: old farmer quote.

Surviving when weather turns against you means thinking outside the box.  The wet and cool/cold has held on and now has put normal planting/harvesting into the far edges of the bell shaped curve of normal results.  The key to remember is YOU STILL HAVE OPTIONS if you think outside the box.   Same old, same old will not cut it this year.

Not all the corn is planted and fields are still too wet.  If there are corn grain growers in the area they are struggling with the wet weather, and the cloudy conditions will significantly decrease projected yields based on previous years like this.  Thus, they may be open for you to buy their standing corn out of the field.  It is not the highly digestible varieties you normally grow but will make more milk than sticks and dirt clods you are facing now.  It is critical to watch the milk line and harvest grain varieties slightly earlier to assure full kernel digestibility and maximize stalk fiber digestion.

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The crazy winter has moved into a crazy spring.  Here in Tennessee, we have bounced between 85°F and 25°F in just a couple of days.  Our triticale is well past quality and was harvested a couple of weeks ago. The bursts of warm days really rushed it through.  North of the Mason-Dixon line (Pennsylvania’s southern border), it is quickly moving past the optimum of stage 9 (flag leaf).   Further north in New York, New England, and the upper Midwest ( Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota) and southern Canada, the triticale and rye is still well behind due to the cold weather.

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