A round baler discharges a fresh wheat bale during harvesting.
Haying season should be wrapping up in west central Saskatchewan, but many poor yielding fields were left or fenced to graze.
Lots of additional forage will need to be made to carry the cattle herd through this winter. The following article was prepared by Dwayne Summach, the livestock and feed extension specialist with the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture in Outlook.
Annual cereal crops are often turned into silage or greenfeed to make up for perennial forage shortfalls. Usually annual crops are harvested according to stages of maturity. Recent work conducted by Dr. Greg Penner’s group at the University of Saskatchewan indicates that waiting for more advanced stages of maturity of stiff dough and ripe grain, result in greater greenfeed yields without compromising digestibility. Unfortunately, when conditions are as moisture limited as areas are experiencing this year, normal crop development cannot be assumed.
Producers will need to carefully monitor plant growth and development and watch for indications that plants have used all available moisture. In cereal crops, that means watching for the tillers to shut down, and the main stem to start drying down. If the crop is to be used for silage, whole plant moisture will become the deciding factor on harvest timing. The silage crew will have to work closely together, with the chopper directly following the swather, to maintain whole crop moisture content of 60% or greater.
Crop that is being preserved as greenfeed should be allowed to advance as much as possible, meaning it may be more yellow than green when it does finally get cut.
Depending on the locally available moisture, there are going to be scenarios where the tillers have been completely sloughed, and other instances where the tillers are going to contribute to the fiber content but not have any significant grain production to contribute to yield.
Feed testing forages this year will be required to determine energy content because the environmental conditions will contribute to highly variable forage nutrient concentrations.
For additional information regarding feed testing or staging annual crops for forage harvest, contact a Livestock and Feed Extension Specialist, or call the Agriculture Knowledge Centre at 1-866-457-2377
