2025 Forage Outlook

In this episode, Mike Donaldson discusses the importance of effective forage management with Jason Alsum, Agri-King's Director of Silo King. They explore the significance of corn silage, the need for proper planning and equipment readiness, and the impact of timing and quality on forage harvesting. Jason emphasizes the importance of digestibility in feed and how it directly affects dairy profitability. The conversation highlights the necessity of continuous improvement in farming practices and the financial benefits of managing forage effectively. 

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Transcript

Chris Radke (00:00)
Hello and welcome to AK Podcasts where we explore science and nutrition behind dairy, science, livestock, care and management with the best and the brightest in the business. I'm your host, Chris Radke, part of the Sales and Marketing team here at Agri-King. And with me today as usual is the Director of Field Services and a member of the Sales Management Team, Mr. Mike Donaldson. Mike, how you doing buddy?

Mike Donaldson (00:23)
very well sir you enjoying the coming of spring?

Chris Radke (00:26)
I am so excited the kids get to go outside and play and they are no longer cabin fevers leaving us. It's great.

Mike Donaldson (00:29)
Yeah. Yeah, no, it's nice to start living in a bigger world than just the one inside your walls.

Chris Radke (00:36)
it gets tight pretty quick about how big your house is I guess Mike who we have with us and what are we talking about today

Mike Donaldson (00:43)
Well, we've got a returning guest today, Chris. We're gonna welcome Jason Alsum. Jason was one of the very first podcasts we did. And Jason's Agri-King's Director of Silo King. Jason, nice to have you back with us.


Jason Alsum (00:57)
Hey, good morning. Thanks guys. Say Chris and Mike. It's great to be with you again today. Thanks for the opportunity.

Mike Donaldson (01:03)
No, glad to have you here. Well, we were joking about winter starting to release its hold a little bit. I know Jason that you work with people from the west coast of the United States all the way over to the United Kingdom and Europe.
I wanted to have a talk about looking forward to the 2025 forage season. I know things need to stay pretty general because there's some places where small grain silage has become as big a factor as alfalfa used to be. And there's places that don't raise small grains for anything other than harvesting grains. So I don't want to try and get too specific. I wanted to start, however, with
maybe one of the most important forages on a lot of farms nowadays. And it's not about getting ready to harvest it, but it's being sure we get it in the ground in a timely fashion. And that would be talking about corn, specifically corn for corn silage. What are your observations about getting that off to the kind of start that in, and I'm not anxious for summer to be gone, not at all, but all of a sudden it's going to be August, September, and it's time to go out and get corn silage cut. What do people need to be doing
now in order to have what they need come harvest.

Jason Alsum (02:22)
Yeah, boy, I too enjoy the change of seasons. It's a great time of year. This is an exciting time of year. You know, we go through our sales cycle and all of our trade shows and that's all great. You get to meet people through the winter, but getting back out on farm, seeing things start to grow. Yeah, very exciting time of year. And yeah, we're, I mean, we're going to talk in a lot of generalities because number one, I don't ever want to try to...
say something against your agronomist on the farm, your consultants on the farm, know you, they know your specific location and they have recommendations for you. But you're absolutely right Mike, corn silage is really become the main staple on farms and that pretty much is coast to coast and overseas. It is probably the most tons that they make.
I've talked to a few farmers in the last couple years that they don't even raise anything other than corn silage. They put all of their acres into corn silage, which, whatever, to each his own, I'd like more of a balanced approach, but some have gone all the way because of the agronomic parts of it, because it's one pass over the field to harvest rather than four, because of some of the...
Hardiness issues with grasses and alfalfas they can die out they can be a little more fickle. So anyway, I get it. So Yeah, what do we do for a good corn crop? Well, first of all through the winter I hope they were planning and doing seed selection and picking out What they need to do then agronomally agronomic for the agronomy part of it agronomically, that's what I was looking for agronomically a couple of plate seeds that I will plant

Mike Donaldson (04:08)
to get it to grow. There you go.

Jason Alsum (04:15)
pun intended, would be the calcium and sulfur. You don't hear that talked to a lot by agronomists. They, you know, it's NP and K, it's balancing that, but I just want to plant that seed that get out there and test your calcium and sulfur levels. Sulfur, and I'm not going to get into the math behind it, but we have some math. Sulfur at the right levels helps make the plant healthy. Calcium at the right levels.
drives all the nutrients. So if you want a healthier plant, I'm planting those seeds that calcium and sulfur are something you want to look at. Talk to your agronomist about. Talk to an Agri-King rep about. We have done a lot of looking at that because of all of our sampling and tissue testing. So that's one I would start with. And then just be intentional. You've already probably picked out your seed, but man, if we're feeding dairy cows, we have to pick out our seed for digestibility.
And if you're just doing a conventional corn, would challenge you to think about that. Put at least most of your acres that you need for corn silage into a more digestible corn. And sometimes they're hard to find. And I know why. Digestibility and varieties for feeding dairy cows are hard to find because that is only 3% of the seed that goes in the ground is used for dairy animals.
We are a small. It's that low. I read an article where it's 6 % that goes into forage. about half of that is dairy cows. You got beef animals. You got other stuff. So we're about 3% of the seed that's planted. So you can see why. I read the article where BMR corn silage, one company is dropping their BMR. Just because of that, it's such a small number. So yeah.

Mike Donaldson (05:43)
It's that low, it's really that low. Wow.
Yeah.

Jason Alsum (06:13)
You have to be intentional and find the right seeds. And then the big ones are ground temperature and be patient, especially in my area. Clay ground, heavy ground, be patient. So when you think you're ready, go on vacation for a couple of weeks or get something else to do and be patient because it has to be ready and you can't compact that ground.

Mike Donaldson (06:30)
Hahaha.
Well, let's move on then.
You're kind of, one of my great frustrations, I don't know how, and I understand, if only 3% of the seed is gonna go for corn silage, I can forgive a seed company for not spending a lot of time on corn silage. If you've decided to have livestock, and you're going to feed them something besides straight corn silage, and I'm like you, Jason, if I had a farm, I'd...
probably be 40 to 60 % haylage and the others percent corn silage. But if you're going to make any hay crop at all, you've got one chance to get that first cutting right. And trying to get people to park a corn planter and go out and do that hay or haylage is...
It can be a losing battle at times, I think. But it starts with getting ready to do that. What are some of the things that even now, if they've just got back from the two week vacation you want them to take, and they can't get on the field, or they've got someone else pumping a pit for them, what are the things that they should be doing now that'll have them ready to go?

Jason Alsum (07:55)
Yeah, yeah, so you're right there. These small grains, alfalfas all the way through that have become, you know, they're a little more critical for the planting part of it because timing is very important. Now out in California on the West Coast and a little down south, starting to, they're getting ready to harvest their wheatlage. We are on a press to get applicators on and to get ready because in the next week or so, they're going to be laying down their wheatlage and taking that in.
Now they make it a little more for fiber and energy more so than protein. Whereas up here in the Northeast, we're planting alfalfa and that's our main protein source. So it's very important that we get a high protein. Some guys have gone to these mixtures. Well, then you have to supplement a little more for protein because you're not going to get the 20, 24% protein you get with an alfalfa. So planning, you've already done that. You're planting.

Mike Donaldson (08:49)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Alsum (08:52)
planned your acres, you've got it planted. So right now, it's equipment. Right now, you should be all your equipment tuned up and ready to go. Once your equipment is tuned up and ready to go, walk the fields. Do it with your agronomist, do it by yourself, talk to your extension agent, get a PEAQ stick, get a tool that gets you out there and walk the fields. So many guys do not know they drive around in a truck and they think it's ready to go.
They may walk into the field 50 yards and say what length it is or what height it is You need to do more than that. You need to know where the ups and downs are what the averages are Where is it in relative to bloom and you need to plan for that? The other thing in part of the planning is what is it for? What are you harvesting this for? So I'll wheat a wheat crop for instance or sorghum, Sudan all of those spring crops What do you plant it for is it for the heifers?
Is it for the dry cows? Is it for the milk cows? That makes a big difference on how you're going to harvest that. Because if that grass, wheat is for a dairy cow, I want to maximize digestibility. I want to maximize energy. I want to maximize nutrient retention, which means I'm going to cut that earlier. If it's for heifers, dry cows, beef animals, for instance, their fiber becomes a little more important and you can

Mike Donaldson (10:10)
Okay.

Jason Alsum (10:20)
let that go a little bit more because sometimes for instance in a beef animal you are feeding them a lot of grain so you may need a little more fiber in there so letting that go a little longer it has to be part of your planning to know where it's going.

Mike Donaldson (10:35)
Does some of that planning even go to, are there people that, in your experience, there people that sometimes even need reminded, I guess I better get enough bale wrap, or I can't count on running down to Farm and Fleet or Tractor Supply and getting a 50 by 300 foot roll of plastic to cover this bunker. I mean, some of the things that probably some people do surprise others, doesn't it?

Jason Alsum (10:49)
Alright.
Yes, yes and that's I did I kind of made the comment that a lot of your planning has to start over the winter. Some of those things should have been looked at how much to be used last year, what do I need for this year, we changed our crops, how much plastic am I going to need, do I need a new load of tires, you know we joke with some of my reps out in the field that you know what they're going to call me the day before or after they cut hay they're going to call me that their applicator doesn't work or they're going to call me for Silo-King or you know so

Mike Donaldson (11:09)
Okay.

Jason Alsum (11:33)
Yes, I get it, there's a lot to juggle, but the better you back it up and go through every step of your harvest and make sure everything is there. Is there enough weights on the pack tractor? What worked last year? What are we gonna do? I love the discussions of, okay, here's how we did last year. What are we gonna do this year to be better? There should be continuous improvement somewhere in your planning. And continuous improvement means this bar that we set last year,

Mike Donaldson (11:56)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Alsum (12:02)
is no longer the bar, this is the bar. And what does it take to go from here to here in our forage harvesting and what we're doing. So yeah, planning and getting all that stuff ordered, very important.

Mike Donaldson (12:05)
Mm-hmm. Well, you mentioned and you talked about using a PEAQ stick. I guess that's the third part of this topic to me is, all right, now it is.
whenever. It's next week in California to do small grains. It's the early May in Pennsylvania to do alfalfa. In Michigan that's maybe more the last week of May. It just depends on local rules. But we're to the point now of deciding when it's go time. And especially talking about the forage, the hay crop that's going to go into the milking herd. How do you coach somebody about when it is time
to park the planter if we have to, now is when we've got chance to make our biggest amount of high quality fiber, high protein feed. Let's go do it.

Jason Alsum (13:07)
Yep. Yep. So, again, having goals. so when you, when you do your planning, I think it's very important as part of the planning to have one go-to person who's doing this manager, chief, lead, whatever you want to call them. That person has to execute the plan. When I had a boss in, in, early in my career that said one hook, one ass.
If you got too many people responsible, who's in charge? Who is the owner going to go to and say, my quality of forage wasn't there? Well, he didn't cut it on time. He didn't merge it on time. He didn't put the inoculum in the tank. didn't. One guy has to be in charge of coordinating that plan. And that's everything from planning the flow, planning machinery, planning custom guys.

Mike Donaldson (13:35)
Hahaha

Jason Alsum (14:03)
How are they going efficiently get this done? You got to have somebody how are you going to work with the custom guy to make sure the inoculant gets mixed in the tank? That's one that frustrates me. They just well he didn't get enough on who's in charge of that It's somebody's got to be asked just ask the question Did you put an oculant in and mix it up one question somebody's got to ask it? That's got to be part of your planning so in order to have a well-run machine


Jason Alsum (14:31)
You gotta have a plan and somebody to execute it. And so when you're talking about getting the best quality, all of those efficiencies are important. But what I really did prior to cutting, for instance, with alfalfa, that's what I did most of the time up here in Wisconsin, in the northern north central part of the country. We raise a lot of alfalfa. The PEAQ stick was my friend.
I would walk fields for guys, I would put the peak stick down. It gives you really accurate line. When you get to that 24, 26 inches, it's about at that 180 relative feed value that you want. It's about right at that pre-bud stage. So that's when you want to be taking it. And then you've got to give your guys a few days heads up and boom, you have to have a goal on what you want. My sweet spot when I did nutrition work was 180 relative feed value.
If I had 180 relative feed value haylage or better, I was happy, cows were happy, everything just seemed to flow better on the farm, we had less out of pocket cost. So that is the one thing that I did. Then you got, boy I could go on on this for a long time. I don't know if you want to break in and give me other questions, but I would go on and say cut height is important.
So many guys want to take that forage right down to the nubs and then you get dirt circulation. You get dirt mixed up from the cutters, from the disc binds that everybody uses. They're moving fast. It gets thrown all around and then you're inoculating your forage with dirt. So you got to have that cut a little bit higher to keep the dust and dirt out of it. And then boy that main guy, whoever it is, has to be monitoring moisture.
when to merge, when to chop. And here's the last one I'm going to talk about. And nobody, everybody struggles to get this right. They might be mindful of it, but moisture at the top of the pile. Everybody cuts everything down and then lo and behold, it got dry at the end and it didn't pack so good. And that's why I have mold on the top. Okay. What are we going do about that this year? Are we going to save 20 acres and cut that down at the end? Make sure that's wetter. We can't cut it with everything else.
if then we're dependent on weather. So let's manage that a little closer. Let's slow down, take a certain amount of acres at the end and cut it, merge it and chop it sooner so that we have a wetter forage on the top. I know it's easy for me to say, but that's what we got to execute because when we close off that bunker, we got to have enough moisture on the top to get it packed down so it seals. And then once you get it done, finish packing, get it closed up.
very fast and put the tires on. So I know that was a lot, but anyway that was my spiel on quality.

Mike Donaldson (17:34)
Jason, that's a lot of things to be paying attention to, but it all makes sense. They all need done. At some point, anyone that's listening to this is going to be thinking, yeah, but what's the payback?
So I'm going to do all these things. Tell me why, other than the fact that I want to do a good job, I want to do a great job. Where's the rubber meet the road on the real value of getting this. This correct.

Jason Alsum (17:51)
Mmm.
Excellent, Mike, I'm glad you asked that question. When I'm in the field, I love it when farmers are engaged enough to ask that question because that's why we're there. We are there as agri-king or consultants. We come to the farm to help make them profitable. We try to share these ideas to give them a greater return on investment, to help them understand what these efficiencies that we talk about mean in their pocketbook.
And one of the analogies that everybody seems to like and understand is, you're grilling a steak. So I'll tell the story. I had bought some wagyu steaks. I spent a ton of money for a bachelor party for one of my boys. I bought wagyu steaks. I was out of town. I put them on somebody else's grill and they started burning. The gas grill was just flaming. I couldn't stop it. Well, wagyu steaks are very...

Mike Donaldson (18:47)
you
Yeah.

Jason Alsum (19:00)
their fat is very soluble and it started flaming and I almost ruined $100 worth of steaks or more. don't remember. Anyway, so when you're grilling a steak, everybody likes a steak nice and juicy and tender, right? You overdo that steak and all of a you have a really disappointing dinner. You're adding A1 and barbecue and all this other sauce to it just to get it down.
And you're thinking, why did I ruin that steak? You know, it's the same thing with your feed. If you let it go too long, it builds fiber, it's undigestible, it's dry, the cows don't like it, you're adding molasses, you're adding water, you're adding stuff to the TMR to get their intakes up. And then because you threw all of this energy out the window and it didn't ferment well, well then, doggone it, I gotta put more corn in, I'm gonna have to add some soybean meal.
Wow, did that cost you a lot of money? Just like ruining a steak. If you don't plan your harvest well, you're gonna ruin your return on investment on the other side. So let's drill that down a little bit. We got a lot of tools to drill that down, but here's one I'll leave you with. If you can increase the digestibility in your TMR, in your TMR now, so this is everything combined, one point of digestibility. So let's say we go from a

Mike Donaldson (20:01)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jason Alsum (20:27)
80% digestible TMR that you mixed up to an 81% digestible TMR. The smart guys tell you that's three pounds of milk. There's enough energy in that TMR with one point to digestibility to get you three pounds of milk. So do the math on that. That's about 20 cents per pound. That's 60 cents. That is, these are rough numbers. You can run them a bunch of different ways, but take 60 cents per head per day.
That's $220,000 on a thousand cow dairy. That's real money. That's real money. That pays for your inoculant. That pays for a lot of your plastic. That pays for a lot. If you get the right quality, you can increase your milk without having to add corn, without having to add soybean meal, without... So you lower your out of pocket cost, which is another chunk of money we didn't even take into account.

Mike Donaldson (21:00)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jason Alsum (21:25)
You increase your digestibility, you increase your feed efficiency. So can you see how these return on investments just start to roll? And then really digestibility of forage and getting it at the right quality is one of the biggest drivers in component efficiency. You heard Don Sanders talk about that in his podcast. He's championing component efficiency. And what does Don say? Quality of forage. Number one, manage that forage well.

Mike Donaldson (21:45)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Alsum (21:54)
get high quality forage what the cow was designed to eat and put it in front of her and you will be efficiently producing more with less out of pocket costs. That's where the money hits the road.

Mike Donaldson (22:05)
Well, and as far as I understand what you're saying about if we're going to grow this for heifers, if we've got a bag or a bunker of just dry cow feed, maybe that part you don't aim for quite such top quality. the difference in yield across a year is minuscule compared to the advantages you're going to give me, isn't it?

Jason Alsum (22:30)
Absolutely. And that's where you mentioned before parking the planter and harvesting the crop, the hay crop or grass crop when it's ready pays back because I've never heard a farmer say, you know what, my corn got in four days later than I had planned and it ruined my results. No, they all come and say, you know what, I parked the planter, I harvested hay. I didn't notice the difference between what I got in.

Mike Donaldson (22:50)
Hey

Jason Alsum (22:58)
four days earlier and it all caught up. That's because of growing degree days. That early stuff didn't get much more heat. It all caught up because of growing degree days. So you, by parking your planter and getting better quality forage for your animals, made yourself money. And then you finished planting the corn, that all catches up and then you get that harvested and put away right. it's so...
That timing is all part of it as well. I don't even know, did I answer your question on that one?

Mike Donaldson (23:28)
No, that's good.
That's good. I got one question just occurred to me because something I've heard you say, and I think it's, you talked about having a plan. You've talked a couple of times about having a purpose. So pretend for a moment that I'm a, I'm a dairyman and my typical way to do haylage I wait until the crop's perfect and then hope the weather's okay.
And I've heard you talk about the need and certainly we live in a time when you can get a lot of great weather forecasts on your phone and everywhere else. But you've talked about the need to be more aware of that and be able, if I, if I need a certain length window, if I, if I need five days to get a cutting made, whatever, whatever it is that I might need, this is why I'm paraphrasing you badly. Maybe I need to err on the side of going a little bit.
early because if I wait till it's going to be perfect, I'm going to be in a seven day rain cycle. How do you work me through that? Because it's not what I'm used to doing. I'm going to cut on 28 days and you want me to go out at day 23. This isn't right.

Jason Alsum (24:43)
Yep, yep, no. here's where being ready counts. First crop is critical. And I've seen this cycle happen in my experience where guides aren't quite ready. That first window presents itself when, yeah, the haylage is at 24 to 26 inches. I'd like to have it at 32 inches. I'm sacrificing, by the way, 24 to 28 inches is gonna be about right for that 180 relative feed value.
But the guy sees that window, but he's not quite ready. And a bunch of his neighbors who are ready, they go out and get it because they have to get it before. And I see this time and time again where the guys who get it establish their 28 days, and they seem to hit all the windows the rest of the summer. The guys who aren't ready, they value tons over quality. They hesitate. They hit a bad window. And now they've got

Mike Donaldson (25:32)
Okay.

Jason Alsum (25:42)
120 relative feed value crap and they seem to hit the bad window for the rest of the crops. That's my world in the Midwest. absolutely, err on the side, get out there and get it early. There'll be other crops you can make up some tonnage, but I'm telling you, you're short a little bit on tonnage, you're gonna be much happier with the quality, the cows are gonna be more efficient with their feed intake, and worst case scenario, you've gotta add a couple of pounds of
cotton seed or soy alls to fluff it up or add some fiber or you've got to a little more corn silage or some of your other feeds, you're going to be happier in the long run because you've got 180 to 200 relative feed value and you can save on your out of pocket soybean meal and corn purchases and put that in the ration. You're going to be happier, be ready to go, ready to go early.

Mike Donaldson (26:33)
That's perfect. Well, it's always a pleasure having you join us, Jason. And I think anyone that works with you in the field would echo this, the passion that you bring to what's possible and the advantage to not settling and not just going through the motions and being average. How much more fun it is to be above average is really exciting. It's hard not to get caught up in that. I appreciate you being with us.

Jason Alsum (26:56)
Mm-hmm. Yep, absolutely. Thank you. I'm happy to be here. It was a lot of fun. Thanks for what you do, guys.

Mike Donaldson (27:07)
Chris, what you learned today.

Chris Radke (27:09)
Hey, my big takeaway is kind of off of what Mike just said. I imagine Jason's kind of like a great waiter. Like you continually go to the same restaurant over and over and you'll get the same thing until Jason comes to your table and says, you know what? Your getting is great, but what we could offer is so much more. And kind of like, what Jason is offering is kind of hopefully what we do here at Agri-King is we're offering so much better. And we just want you to try the samples, I guess. Here, try this, you know? Just walk along. You want more digestibility? We can do that. Here, it's just right here. You gotta flip the pages over.

Mike Donaldson (27:15)
Hahaha. you

Jason Alsum (27:36)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Radke (27:37)
So I kind of envision that that's what Jason does. Maybe has a silver platter with he does it, but just eloquently stares and like you just said, Mike, he's got great passion about it. So that's amazing. If you like what you heard, you like what you listen to, what we talked about, hit us up on any of our socials and leave us a review and pass the word along. If you have anything that you would like us to talk about or that you have questions about, you can email us at podcast@ agriking.com. Mike, Jason, thank you so much. Have wonderful days.

Mike Donaldson (28:05)
Thank you guys, appreciate it.

Jason Alsum (28:06)
Thanks guys, take care, see you later.