By Rainey Rosemond
As we move into spring, many farmers will begin harvesting winter small grains. Commonly planted small grains in Pennsylvania include rye, triticale, oats, and wheat. While some farmers primarily use small grains to extend forage feed inventories, they are additionally beneficial to soil environments.
Small grains are harvested based on maturity, which often leads to a wet forage at the time of harvesting. While small grains must be harvested at an early stage of growth to ensure good feed quality, excessive moisture can pose a risk when ensiling. Small grains harvested during the flag leaf stage will likely have a moisture exceeding 70%. In this case, cutting the crop at the flag leaf stage to maintain quality and wilting the crop below 70% moisture prior to chopping will help avoid ensiling concerns with wet forages. As small grains mature, protein and energy will decline as grain fill is prioritized.
In Pennsylvania, spring rainfall is highly unpredictable and can prevent farmers from cutting at the flag leaf stage. However, planning for this can help avoid frustrations with reduced crop quality. Forages that must be harvested late due to weather conditions will have reduced quality as a milking cow feed but can be used to feed heifers and dry cows. When feeding small grains to close-up dry cows or heifers, be aware of potential issues with potassium levels. It is important to make sure your nutritionist regularly, as frequently as bi-weekly, samples small grains fed to dry cows and runs a wet chemistry package on minerals to balance a close-up ration correctly.
Harvested small grains are typically stored as either wrapped bales or in silos. For both systems, small grains stored with a high moisture content should be watched for both seepage and butyric acid concentrations. Penn State has recently collected field data from dairies feeding small grains stored either in vertical silos or in wrapped bales and analyzed the difference in management styles on particle size of the fed total mixed ration (TMR). Small grains chopped and stored in silos (Figure 1) compared to wrapped bales (Figure 2) had a more ideal particle size profile when incorporated in the TMR.
Source : psu.edu