Glenda Pereira: 00:12
Welcome to the Maine Farmcast. This is your host, Dr. Glenda Pereira, an assistant professor at the University of Maine. For today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about forage forecast for this winter and spring. As many of you know, we’ve been experiencing drought here in the Northern New England area.
Glenda Pereira: 00:31
I have two guests with me today to talk more about the topic. So I have a return guest, Dr. Sarah Allen from UNH Extension. And then we have a new member on the Maine Farmcast, and that’s Carl. Carl, would you please introduce yourself to our listeners?
Carl Majewski: 00:47
Carl Majewski. I’m also with UNH Extension, field specialist on the dairy and livestock team, but I deal mostly with forage and field crop production.
Sarah Allen: 01:00
When they’re in the ground, you go to Carl. Once they’re out of the ground, you can come to me.
Glenda Pereira: 01:04
Yeah. Yeah. So, Sarah and Carl, we were going to talk about what the drought stress is doing to forage production here in the Northern New England states. So, Carl and Sarah, as you’re heading out to farm visits, talking to folks as they get ready to plan their winter and spring, or think about their winter and spring forage inventory, what are you seeing out there?
Carl Majewski: 01:31
I’m seeing things have just kinda been grinding to a halt. You see it mostly in grass. You know, the grasses that we grow here are mostly cool season perennial species that do best when we’ve got cooler temperatures and plenty of moisture, which means that when you’ve got drought conditions, they just slow right down. So fields that should be, you know, lush and green and getting ready for, like, a nice third cutting, they’re half the size of what they should be. In cornfields, where I’m at in the southwestern part of the state where we haven’t had as much of a drought for as long, we’re still seeing some areas, you know, on really dry, sandy, gravelly soils where the corn is stunted, where it’s all curled up, you know, half the height of what it should be and, you know, showing some stress.
Carl Majewski: 02:32
So that’s definitely going to affect yield.
Sarah Allen: 02:34
And for the pieces that have already been harvested, for most of the, like, dry hay specifically that’s been harvested, I’ve seen quite a bit of variation in quality. People’s ability to get out on the fields varied drastically. And that is the same for planting corn as well. So I’m expecting to see quite a bit of variation a little bit later on whenever we have our corn harvest. Quite a few farms had to, you know, backtrack and make a few plans, maybe swapping out their corn seed whenever they were planting or planting some different crops in fields where they just weren’t gonna be able to get corn in on time.
Sarah Allen: 03:14
But mostly the variation, and some people preparing to buy feed this year.
Glenda Pereira: 03:22
That’s right. Because we did have a very wet spring. I remember we had maybe like 12 or 13 Saturdays where it just rained every weekend.
Sarah Allen: 03:31
Every single weekend.
Glenda Pereira: 03:33
Right. We kind of had, you know, the two extremes where it was really wet. People couldn’t really get out to first cut or planting right away. And then we are on the other side where we have no rain, no moisture out there. And a lot of fields in New England aren’t irrigated, so we’re not able to get any moisture out there.
Glenda Pereira: 03:52
So I’m curious. What can folks be thinking about in the next couple of weeks? I know some folks, like you mentioned, maybe are doing a second cut right now because they weren’t able to. So what should people start thinking about as we go into the winter months?
Carl Majewski: 04:14
I would say that a lot of it just depends on what the upcoming weather brings. You know? Hopefully, there’ll be an end to this drought, and if we’ve got some more rain, there is some time to, you know, maybe build up those inventories a little bit on your forage stands. If we start getting into a little bit of rain and the moisture situation improves, harvest those fields, top dress them with nitrogen, and see if you can maybe get a late third cutting in there. You know, at this point, if your inventories are low, anything you can get will help.
Glenda Pereira: 04:53
And we were briefly talking about planting potentially some annuals. So it’s still not too late to do that,
Glenda Pereira: 05:02
but these annuals would be harvested potentially in the spring. So then you’re just, like you mentioned, adding more to your inventory. So what do you recommend for folks thinking about planting an annual if they can do a double crop?
Carl Majewski: 05:15
It seems that you’ll get the best success the earlier that you start. So, ideally, in this neck of the woods, if you can get your seed sown by around September 10 or September 15, that gives you enough time to get enough growth in the fall to get those plants established, to get your highest yields in the following spring. It seems that you can do it with any of your winter grains, but rye and triticale seem to be the most winter hardy. And of those, triticale seems to offer a little bit better quality. It matures just a little bit later, so that buys you some time in the spring so you don’t have to chop in May when the snow just melted a week before.
Carl Majewski: 06:08
And apparently, from some of the stuff I’ve been reading, it’s more resistant to lodging. So you can get good yields and not worry about it all just, you know, kinda laying over in the field.
Sarah Allen: 06:24
These make really good, you know, feeds for your animals as well. Triticale and rye both. I have more experience feeding triticale. I think it tends to have a little bit better quality, like Carl was saying. But if you get it harvested on time, and at that point it’s still in the ground, so call Carl for when to do that.
Sarah Allen: 06:43
But if you can get it harvested on time, it makes really good feed. One of the tricky things with some of these forages, though, is that your harvest time is incredibly important. If you wait a couple of days, it goes from rock star cow feed, beautiful quality, very digestible, to some pretty good heifer feed really quickly. And then wait a couple more days, another week, you’ve got some fantastic bedding. And that’s about it.
Sarah Allen: 07:11
So you have to be very careful to make sure that you have the equipment and staff on hand whenever it’s time to harvest. You have to be able to go if you are planning on feeding it. Some farms are not planning on feeding it and are just using it for some of the advantages in the field. But if you’re planning on using it for animal feed, that is essential.
Glenda Pereira: 07:32
So I think people usually recommend, like, the flag leaf and boot stage is probably the best time to be harvesting that, get it off. I know for farms wanting to extend their grazing season, and they’re in the same boat, organic farms and grazing farms are in the same boat as other farms where they don’t have moisture. So planting an annual or even, if they can do a summer annual, annuals are good, you know, crops to rely on. I wanted to talk more about harvest strategies and what you’re sort of seeing and what are you recommending to folks as they get ready to head into the field, and specifically for corn silage. Because I know a lot of folks are gonna be getting to that here pretty soon.
Carl Majewski: 08:14
So I think in those areas that are hit the hardest with the drought, nitrates would be a concern. When plants are drought stressed, they’re not able to basically metabolize the nitrogen that they take up, and so it accumulates in the lower part of the stalk as nitrates, and in high enough concentrations, those nitrates are toxic. If you’ve got severely drought-stressed corn and it stays drought stressed right up until the time that you’ve chopped, some of the things that we recommend: if you do get any rain, then you wanna wait a good three to five days after a rain to harvest to give the plant a chance to kind of take up that moisture, move that nitrogen throughout the plant so that you don’t have those high concentrations. Otherwise, if you can, then you chop high, you know, leaving a stubble height of at least 12, maybe even 18 inches, just because those nitrates are concentrated at the lower end of the stalk. So if you leave that in the field, then that’s less that you’re putting in the bunker.
Carl Majewski: 09:20
And then also remember that ensiling, the ensiling process, does kind of reduce the amount of nitrates by about 60 percent. So, you know, if you’ve got high nitrate feed, definitely wait until it’s in for a good three or four weeks rather than trying to feed it out as green chop.
Sarah Allen: 09:43
I would say, too, once you are harvesting it, this may be the year to invest in your storage. So don’t always think that having, you know, the oxygen barrier is required. On some farms, the return on investment for that versus just some of your other barriers is not always quite as high. But you will save more forage. So if you’re worried about just having enough feed this year, this may be the year that you kind of put all of your eggs in that basket and make sure that you are storing it according to, like, the gold standards.
Sarah Allen: 10:18
If you are worried about, or if you wanna try out inoculant to see if you maybe prevent any spoilage this year, this is kind of the year to do that if you’re worried about it.
Glenda Pereira: 10:32
From what I’m hearing, everybody’s gonna be short. So you guys are hearing the same thing, and people are either gonna have to buy more grain or they’re gonna have to buy in forage. What are you seeing, what are folks telling you that they’re leaning towards? And we had this conversation a little bit before we got started, but, you know, the energy and the protein demands are still there for all of our animals regardless of where they are in their life stage. Right?
Glenda Pereira: 10:59
So there are some animals that require less energy and protein that we always think about, you know, our dry cows and our potentially bred heifers. Those guys don’t really need as much protein and energy, and especially not as much as our early lactation cows. So we have some wiggle room of how we can maybe feed our less desirable forages to those folks. But some groups will have to kind of, you know, think about our grain cost and budget potentially more funds to our grain costs as we try to maintain body condition throughout the winter and into the spring.
Sarah Allen: 11:37
If you’re planning on buying in forages, it’s not a bad idea to make sure that the person you’re buying them from has a forage test. That way, just with the variation that we’ve seen in quality, you’ll be able to have a better understanding of what to expect with your grain supplementation. Like you were saying, Glenda, you know, unfortunately, just because we don’t have the feed available doesn’t mean that the animals don’t still need the same amount of feed. And so you might have to have a tough, you know, conversation about, do I spend more money getting quality forage? Depending on how short forage is, that may be a pretty, pretty high expense.
Sarah Allen: 12:20
Or is it gonna be cheaper for me to supplement, you know, more pounds of grain to replace some of the, you know, energy and protein that that forage may lack. And that’s something that’s gonna be individual based on what your grain price is at the time and what your, you know, forage availability is. But you still need to make sure that you have enough feed on hand for the animals that you have. And if you don’t think that that’s going to be possible, then, you know, it’s not a bad idea to take a look at whether or not, you know, you cull more intensively this year. You know, cow prices are still pretty high.
Sarah Allen: 13:00
So if you have some animals that aren’t, you know, paying for themselves, then maybe this is the year that you take a look at that. Or if you are currently raising too many animals for your replacements, you’re still gonna have to feed those replacements in the spring. So, you know, taking a look at your animal inventory numbers and how many animals will be expected to eat that forage come winter, come spring. It’s not a bad idea to go ahead and look ahead to that and just see where your inventory is at and how much that grain bill might go up if you’re looking at a shortage and poor quality forages.
Glenda Pereira: 13:40
And I think, too, something to consider is that paying attention to growth this winter, I think, will be something that folks will maybe just have to be more in tune with. Do sort of a quick body condition score assessment, and are they where they’re supposed to be? We don’t wanna shortchange anybody because, you know, I was having this conversation with a farmer the other day. You pay now or you pay later. And when we’re talking about calves specifically, if we shortchange calves right now, they’re just gonna, you know, take sometimes twice as long as they would if you had just, you know, kept their plate of nutrition the same and not shortchanged them.
Glenda Pereira: 14:20
Because, again, we’re trying to get that heifer ready to come into lactation, but we’ve seen it time and time again. If we shortchange them in the beginning, well, you’re gonna have to put a lot of money into energy during that first couple of months of lactation so she can still continue to grow. So you pay now, you pay later. But like Sarah mentioned, maybe this is the time when folks consider, am I gonna raise every single heifer that’s born in the next two, three months? Because in two, three months, they’re gonna be needing to eat that forage.
Glenda Pereira: 14:46
So think about culling decisions now. And like I said, try not to shortchange anybody if you can because it’s gonna come back around, and you’ll pay for it another way in one way or another. So not only your bought forage, but what does your energy and your corn silage look like this year? And, Carl, you can maybe speak to this, but our corn, you know, you said there’s some time to catch up, but it hasn’t had consistent moisture throughout the entire growing season. So there can be instances where your corn might not be exactly what it’s been before.
Glenda Pereira: 15:28
Even if it did all the catching up it could. So just looking at that starch, looking at that net energy for lactation value, and making sure that it’s in the right recommended range, especially for your early lactation and high producing cows.
Carl Majewski: 15:43
Absolutely. Early in the season when it was so wet, and you had all those, you know, those hazy days, all that cloud cover, your ears are actually starting to form at that point when the corn is only about a foot tall or so. So, you know, that lack of sunlight, that less sunlight in intensity that you might have compared to a normal season, you know, putting the drought stress on top of that, your ears aren’t gonna be as big. The kernels on that ear aren’t gonna be as well developed. So that’s gonna have a big impact on that grain component of your silage.
Carl Majewski: 16:24
And testing it, knowing what you’re feeding, is always a smart idea.
Glenda Pereira: 16:30
Do you have any resources that you recommend to folks for how they can do an easy forage inventory? Like, is there a record sheet that they can fill out? Or it’s really just how many animals do you have? What are your expected pounds, as fed, of dry matter, and then sort of working back to understand if you’re gonna have enough feed or not.
Sarah Allen: 16:55
I think what you just described is what you would need to do, looking at what your animals are currently eating. That’s generally gonna be a good predictor for, you know, the amount of forage that you’re gonna go through in the future per animal. And looking at it on a dry matter basis. But also understanding that if you are feeding poor quality forage compared to higher quality forage, they may not be able to consume as much of it because it’s bulkier and so it’ll just be filling up space for a longer period of time. So when you’re purchasing poor quality forage, that number that they consume might be a little bit less.
Sarah Allen: 17:32
Which just means it’s another reason why you’re gonna have to balance that with more grain. And like you said, Glenda, really just keep an eye on their production, their body condition, especially for lactating animals. Monitoring their body condition is gonna be really essential just to make sure that they’re not losing weight. If you’ve got any animals, they may still be producing fine, but they may not breed back very quickly if they’re not getting the energy. They will, you know, cows will prioritize making milk before they’ll prioritize getting pregnant again.
Sarah Allen: 18:04
And so they can still be producing pretty well but not be getting enough energy. And if they’re younger, just making sure specifically that they’re getting the height that they need. That’s some pretty expensive growth on young animals. And so even if, you know, their body condition looks pretty good, if they’re shorter than they should be, that’s gonna be really hard to catch up on later and very, very expensive like you mentioned. So, just keeping those things in mind whenever you’re looking at your forage inventory relative to your animal production.
Sarah Allen: 18:36
It might be a little bit of a game in the winter and spring to see whether or not you got it right.
Glenda Pereira: 18:42
If you’re getting ready for the winter, you want animals to maintain. So I’ve had a couple people that I’ve worked with and, you know, they lose all this body condition by November, and then they’re like, all right. How do I get it back on? And that’s just an uphill battle that you’re gonna be consistently fighting because animals in the winter are using almost all of their energy to just, you know, keep themselves warm. So try to get everybody to the ideal condition sometime by mid-October, but definitely before November because once those winter months hit, they’re gonna just have to maintain their body weight.
Glenda Pereira: 19:23
You don’t want them to lose any body weight up until that point. So try to put on condition in the next couple of months so then you’re just maintaining, and then you’re not having to try to catch up during the winter months. I really appreciate you both coming on and giving us a little bit of your expertise and expanding my knowledge base as well. So if folks have further questions, be sure to reach out to myself, Sarah, or Carl. I’m gonna drop their contact information in the show notes, and we’re looking forward to future episodes.
Glenda Pereira: 19:54
And I hope in these next couple of weeks, our crops can do a little bit of catching up.
Carl Majewski: 20:00
That would be great.
Sarah Allen: 20:01
Thanks for having us, Glenda.
Glenda Pereira: 20:03
If listeners have topic suggestions, comments, or concerns, be sure to email us at extension.farmcast@maine.edu