Tom

Our BMR brachytic forage sorghum has done well in spite of the extremely dry weather.  It was planted the 25 of May but stood still for a while until it got watered (June 3 planting was killed by chilling injury from very cold temperatures). Soft dough stage was just reached today on most of the plants.  Yields are running 22 to 25 tons of 35% dry matter silage in spite of the very dry summer (we has some critical rains others did not).  For those growing it for the first time the following are the questions you have asked or should be asking; the following are some suggestions based on our research the with the crop the past five years.

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What You Do This Fall Can:

• Increase dry matter harvested/acre by 25 – 35%
• Harvest 6 to 10 tons/acre of high quality silage before spring grasses or legumes are ready.
• Increase corn yields in tilled ground the next year by 7.2% to 12.3% and in no-tilled ground by 8.5% to 16.8% (Van Es et al 2016).
• Produce forage that supports the very specific diet of the high and fresh cows.
• Have forage that farmers and nutritionists report keeps the cows milking in hot weather.
• Reduce winter and perennial weeds pressure by competition
• Capture $30 to $50/acre of leftover soil nitrogen that would have been lost to the environment and convert this to useable protein for your animals (NYFVI research).
• Improved soil health for long term yield increases and the ability to produce in adverse weather.

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Across the northeast, the season has been a wide range of conditions.  Much of New England and New York has been very to extremely dry.  Further west, areas have been wiped out from to much rain. We lost several sorghum research experiments due to extended cold weather in June!  The bottom line is that it is mid-July and we need forage.  Fortunately, last year with the help of Preferred Seed Co., we put in an “oh crap it is mid July, what can I plant” test.  It was very dry thereafter (only 4 significant rain events until the end of September).  We still got crops of very good feed quality and economic yields. The potential advantage this year is that weather forecasters are saying September and October will be warmer than normal so we may capture more yield and reach maturity if we miss the frost.

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Coming off of an El Nino winter we are moving ahead of the long term average for heat unit accumulation.  Yes, we have had cold spells, but with very warm weather in between.  This adds to the growing degree day accumulation which predicts the maturity of the haylage.  Temperatures have consistently reached the upper 50 and lower 60’s; which is perfect for cool season forages.  First cutting haylage is normally the best legume/grass haylage of the season so it is important to get it right.  The right stage of harvest is much sooner than you think

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The above was written in April of 2012, another year with a collapsing El Nino going into a La Nina.  I had a corn silage variety trial and much of the corn died on July 4 from the lack of water and heat.  The forecasts are for it to be cool to cold spring and then dry, especially around the great lakes, and hot for much of the Northeast and Midwest.

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We have been getting a lot of questions from farmers interested in trying bmr forage sorghum.   The January letter on Advanced Ag web site (top of this letter) went over a number of background details. This letter is the summary of what we learned so far planting bmr forage sorghum (research continues this year). If you are round baling we suggest the finer stemmed one or multi-cut BMR sorghum-Sudan or the multi-cut Sudan x Sudangrass which has higher digestibility. We dealt with bmr sorghum-Sudan in the February letter.

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Organic dairy and livestock farms utilize high forage diets to reduce the cost of expensive purchased organic grain supplement.  Thus they need an organic source of high energy forage.  Most will plant corn for silage and then apply multiple passes by cultivators in attempt to control the weeds and produce a viable, harvestable, economic crop.

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There has been a growing interest in the use of sorghum as a corn replacement or partial replacement across much of the northeast and southern Canada.  Many areas are constrained by short seasons already.  A large number of farms have decided to get off the “long season corn” train.

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The June newsletter covered the spring conditions that made a perfect storm for poor winter forage yields this year.  Yields were down but quality, for those who cut on time, was very good as always (see fermented forage analysis in Addendum to this letter).  Some have been talking about dropping the crop, but there is NO crop I have seen in my 40 years of working and researching that is perfect.  Every crop has a hole in its veneer.

The real advantage of the winter forage is for farms that have had weather related decreases in their total forage supply.  Winter forage (triticale) will give you the earliest high quality, potentially high yielding crop, next spring; forage for the high cows.  This crop is a real advantage in areas where much of the corn is growing in standing water.

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With weather repeating the wet conditions of 2013, there are farms who still have not planted fields or have crops that have drowned.  We have research in the ground looking at various choices but you need suggestions now.

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