Glenda Pereira: 00:06
Welcome to the Maine Farmcast. This is your host, Dr. Glenda Pereira, an Assistant Extension Professor and Dairy Specialist for the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, as well as an Assistant Professor of Animal Science for the School of Food and Agriculture. So I have a return guest, our forage expert, Joe Lawrence, who’s joining us from Cornell University and the PRO-DAIRY team. And the last time we had Joe on the podcast, we had left our discussion talking about how a lot of the work that his team does is focused on understanding what are the management and environmental factors that potentially influence the yield or the potential of a hybrid to grow successfully depending on your location.
Glenda Pereira: 00:52
And there was a lot of application for feeding it as well. So there was a really nice prediction model for milk yield. But we alluded to this some, and I know folks have heard Juan say this, but once you put your forage up, right? Once it’s wrapped up in a bale or in a bunk somewhere, there’s really a big limitation to what the nutritionist can do and to what you can do with that forage. So a lot of the work and what you’ve been trying to capture is, what can we do before that crop is in the bunk?
Glenda Pereira: 01:26
What can we do before that to set it up really successfully for whatever its end use is, right? Whether it’s grain or silage or even our other grass forages and legumes. How can we set that up successfully? I think because we’re recording this to be released right around the time when folks are prepping to get out into the field and maybe, depending on where they are, doing their first cutting, thinking about forage harvesting is really critical because you can’t control anything after it’s been put up. I’d like for us to pick up back there.
Glenda Pereira: 02:02
So Joe, thanks again for being on the Maine Farmcast.
Joe Lawrence: 02:04
Yeah, thanks for having me. And I think that was a great setup as we come into the spring of the year. You know, it’s been well documented that whether it’s our hay crops or our corn silage, the stage of plant maturity at harvest is one of the number one factors for nutritional value and forage quality. And so being prepared for the harvest season, we can’t turn off the rain, we can’t control the weather, but if we can be prepared and ready to manage what we can within the season to set ourselves up for success, because once that forage passes its optimum maturity for harvest, yeah, as you mentioned, we’re going to be dealing with that for the next twelve months, or fifteen months, or however long that inventory lasts us. That’s what we have to deal with.
Joe Lawrence: 03:02
How do we manage that? And spring’s always a busy time on a dairy farm, right? We’ve got manure spreading, corn planting, first cutting, all those things. So how do we set ourselves up for that? And, you know, on the corn side, if you had the opportunity to listen in on the last one, we talked a little bit about relative maturities and certainly trying to get your corn planted early is important.
Joe Lawrence: 03:28
But if we’re dialing back those relative maturities a little bit, then it gives us a little more of a window. And there’s an old saying that when first cutting’s ready on a dairy farm, park the corn planter and get that first cutting done. And that doesn’t matter if it’s an old stand of orchardgrass or a new seeding of alfalfa. They have different optimum dates to harvest, but they can both be high quality dairy lactating cow feed if we capture them in that harvest window.
Glenda Pereira: 04:04
Yeah. And I think we see that more so now because a lot of folks have been playing with these winter annuals too in the spring. And those folks potentially have seen how, you know, if you don’t hit that crop right away, if you don’t park the corn planter, that triticale will be basically bedding. From today to tomorrow, it’s gone from really, like St. Allen’s, rocket fuel to now it’s like heifer and cow bedding is kind of what it turns into.
Glenda Pereira: 04:38
You’re right. With the varieties we have today for forages and the selection that’s available, really paying attention to that optimum forage quality for the end use, right? Most folks, and the folks, our clients, are probably going to be those milking dairy cows or growing animals. Hitting it at the right time, putting it up at the right time, and then getting that milk quality, I guess forage metric that you want for energy and protein, is really what’s driving that. So yeah, park the corn planter.
Glenda Pereira: 05:14
I like that. So walk us through some of the other tips or how you consult with your clients right now during this time and some of the things that you’re thinking through and suggesting for how they can set themselves up for a successful season.
Joe Lawrence: 05:33
Yeah. I mean, it’s one of those time periods in the year where, obviously, keeping safety and getting enough sleep and that sort of thing in mind, it’s just a busy time. And we certainly don’t want to sacrifice safety or human health in the process. But it’s one of those times on a farm where we just have to get things done, right? But if we can be a little more strategic about planning and having priorities set, if we just have a washout of a spring and none of it goes right, but within the context of kind of an average year, we should be able to prioritize and start corn planting.
Joe Lawrence: 06:14
Your dates are going to vary by exactly where you are, but we have corn hybrids that have better seedling vigor and are more protected from soil-borne pathogens and so can tolerate being planted into cooler soils a little bit. So we don’t want to mud them in, we don’t want to plant into wet conditions. But if we can get out there a few days earlier, get the corn planter rolling, get a good jumpstart on that, again, not push the relative maturities we’re using too much, and then have all the hay equipment ready to go. And then if we’re monitoring those grass fields and paying attention as the head comes up through the stem and trying to capture those in that boot stage before the head emerges. The old saying is that in grasses, once you see the head, the quality is dead. Then it’s time to park the corn planter and jump on the mower.
Joe Lawrence: 07:14
And some concepts that have been around for a few decades now are the wide swathing of the hay, laying it out as wide as possible. Ideally, the rule of thumb that we like to see is 80% of the cutter bar width. So for simple math, if you had a 10-foot-wide mower, you would like that swath behind you to be at least eight feet wide behind that 10-foot mower. And that’s just going to give you a more consistent dry-down. There was a term used for a while called hay in a day.
Joe Lawrence: 07:45
And I don’t really like that term because it’s not necessarily the goal to try to get it within one 24-hour period, but there is real benefit to minimizing the time from when you mow it down to the time you ensile it. So if we can lay it out wide, get it drying quickly, get it to the right dry matter for the silo we want, and get it ensiled, that has the forage nutritional benefit of conserving some of the nutritional value of the feed. But it also has the logistical benefit of fitting harvest into narrower weather windows. So if we see we have a two- or three-day window with very little rain in the forecast, which can be hard to come by sometimes in the month of May, but if we see that, then if we’re using these practices, we have a little more confidence that I can go out there with the mower and I’m going to get this dry and get it ensiled before this next rain front comes through.
Joe Lawrence: 08:49
Just using those practices, being ready and being ready to pull the trigger. And also going back to, right, we have winter cereal grains, we have perennial grasses, we have our alfalfa and our legumes, and they all have different harvest timings. But what they all have in common is they can either be really great feed if they’re harvested on time, or they can be really terrible feed. And sometimes I run into farms that’ll say, well, I have these old grass fields and I just leave those for last because they’re going to be my heifer feed. And I like to push back on that and say, well, no. If you have a window in mid-May, go out and get them as dairy quality feed because you can make heifer feed any time of the year with any of these crops.
Joe Lawrence: 09:37
Any time you have a weather window and a field that’s at the right maturity in that weather window, go get it and secure your lactating quality feed first.
Glenda Pereira: 09:50
Yeah, I really like that approach. And I laugh because I think it’s just the reality for some folks, you know, when they’re thinking about all the chores, they’re like, well, the heifer feed seems to be an easy one to justify why you didn’t get out there quickly enough. And you can just say, hey, it’s okay. We’ll fall back to that. But from what I’m understanding, May is really that month where you can do some of this.
Glenda Pereira: 10:24
Where you’re going to get a really good first cutting, potentially depending where you are here in the Northeast. And you have that flexibility to try to make every cutting a lactating dairy quality cutting. Is that correct?
Joe Lawrence: 10:40
Absolutely. Yeah, to me, that’s the way to approach it, is every field on your farm and every cutting gives you the opportunity for that dairy quality feed. And let’s secure that first. And then we can worry about picking up some stuff later on. Once we have the tons in inventory that we’re comfortable with for our lactating herd, then we can worry about the other stuff.
Glenda Pereira: 11:06
Yeah. And I’m just recalling this because last year I had some folks that weren’t able to even get second cutting until late August because Maine has been in a drought. It was a drought the entire year. And like you’re saying, if they missed that first opportunity to make some lactating dairy quality feed because something happened that day and they couldn’t do it, they weren’t able to kind of recoup because their second cutting was so late in the month of August.
Glenda Pereira: 11:40
Yeah. I really like that approach, you know, secure as much inventory for lactating quality feed, and then you have June, July, and August to play around with for getting your other stage-of-life animal feed.
Joe Lawrence: 11:58
Yeah. To that point, I hesitate to mention trends here in New York that may or may not apply to Maine, but you mentioned the weather patterns. And one thing we’ve observed here is we’ve tended to have some drier stretches in early June. And so our dairy farms that have been timely with their first cutting of their hay crops, we tend to get a little moisture and it gets that second cutting going. And they had a nice high quality first cutting and get a little moisture and get a nice second cutting.
Joe Lawrence: 12:49
And then we’ve had scenarios where farms that have been a little delayed in their first cutting, by the time they finally cut it, we go into a bit of a dry stretch. And so they end up with lower quality first cutting, but then they end up with some delayed second cutting, and it takes longer to get going again. It doesn’t necessarily have the moisture, and then it doesn’t yield as well. And it creates this bit of a snowball pattern. And again, as soon as I say something like that, next year we’re going to have lots of rain right after first cutting and it won’t be an issue. But it is a bit of a pattern that we’ve picked up on.
Joe Lawrence: 13:45
Yeah, you can talk to two different farms and one will say, I have, you know, first and second cutting were both great. I have lots of tonnage of high quality feed. And then you go to their neighbor and it’s like, yeah, my first cutting was so-so and I don’t have anything for second cutting. And when you get talking to them, they’re neighboring farms. What you find is the difference was the harvest date of their first cutting, and it made the difference for both cuttings.
Glenda Pereira: 13:45
Yeah, the opportunity is the month of May.
Joe Lawrence: 13:48
Absolutely. And whether it’s hiring custom harvesters or custom manure applicators or just figuring out what your game plan is and where your labor is coming from, just trying to have that game plan in place to realize that you have to get all those tasks done. And it’s worth spending a little bit of resources to be as timely as possible with all of them.
Glenda Pereira: 14:17
Yeah. Great. No, I love that. I think we’ve shared a ton of information and folks can reference the previous podcast episode too. And I’m going to share a ton in the show notes because I know you sent me some really nice resources for thinking about planning your dates and kind of setting up your summer schedule for thinking about your first harvest date.
Glenda Pereira: 14:39
Was there anything else we missed? I know we talked about tractor safety and equipment. That, of course, I think is always relevant throughout the entire year, but especially when there’s a lot of moving equipment on the farm. So we had a tractor safety episode early on in the podcast. Folks can reference that.
Glenda Pereira: 14:57
But was there anything else? I think we really covered it. I just want to give folks the opportunity to share one or two takeaways that we potentially didn’t talk about.
Joe Lawrence: 15:08
Yeah. To me, there’s kind of post-harvest, there are a few opportunities that I think are important. Obviously, the ensiling process and getting a good fermentation is really important. And that’s a whole topic on its own. But one thing I like to link back to the harvest planning part is thinking through what we have available for storage of the feed on the farm.
Joe Lawrence: 15:32
Because sometimes we’ll end up with, whether it’s an upright silo or just one large bunker silo, we end up burying a very high quality feed behind a poorer quality feed. Anything we can do to think through our strategy for where different feeds are going to go, if Mother Nature doesn’t cooperate and we do get delayed in our harvest, do we have an alternative spot that we can put that lower quality feed? Because it may be a very good feed for a certain group of animals on the farm. But if we have two months of it and it’s covering up our best quality feed, and we have to feed through it before we get to that good quality stuff, it really handcuffs us.
Joe Lawrence: 16:37
So before we get to the fermentation and all the importance there as a separate thing, it’s just thinking about your options for storage and some contingency planning for storage as part of your harvest planning process, I think is important.
Glenda Pereira: 16:37
Yeah. Yeah. And I just saw here you shared your two awesome resources talking about forage storage planning. Absolutely. So mapping that out.
Glenda Pereira: 16:46
And I think the more folks I interview on the Maine Farmcast, really it seems like putting something down on paper is a key strategy, right? It doesn’t have to be a polished architectural design. Here are my three bunks on the farm or whatever. Or if I’m doing an ag bag, here’s where we’re going to store this feed, that feed, and keep it super simple.
Glenda Pereira: 17:10
But then I have this much tonnage for the lactating cows, so I’m going to cut into this here. Yeah, it’s just getting something sketched down on paper. And I’ll share these resources for folks. And as well, you can reach out to us here in Extension as you’re going through the growing season. We’re recording this at a time where folks can be thinking through some of this, but for sure feel free to reach out and communicate the needs that you have on your farm.
Glenda Pereira: 17:54
But that was a really well-rounded way to just kind of briefly touch on everything we wanted to share for a successful first cutting, thinking about your harvest window, not sacrificing. Maybe you are planting something else, but not sacrificing that harvest window. So pausing whatever it is you’re doing to get that quality feed. May being the opportunity month where folks can have a lot of flexibility to secure that lactating dairy quality feed and then worry about other animals later on throughout the summer. And then that first harvest date really sets you up for the entire season. That was really critical to relearn, as you mentioned.
Glenda Pereira: 18:27
And then thinking about storage. I think folks have a lot to be thinking about as they’re maybe listening to this episode as they’re doing chores, getting ready for the spring season. Some folks maybe are already getting out there. I know in the Midwest, folks can get out there as early as April if the conditions are right. There’s lots to think about. So thank you, Joe. That was fantastic.
Joe Lawrence: 18:54
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity.
Glenda Pereira: 18:56
Yeah. Joe is always a resource, but he is in New York. You can reach out to him and his team as well, and we all try to help in the capacity that we can. I’ll leave his contact information here and you can read up more and follow along on the work that they’re doing.
Glenda Pereira: 19:14
For our listeners, if you have future topic suggestions, comments, or questions, be sure to email us at extension.farmcast@maine.edu.