Sweet corn silage

jacksonduper · Feb 13, 2010

I live in Southern Wisconsin and there is a Sweet Corn plant near my house. I have some beef cattle and I was toying with the idea of buying some sweet corn silage next summer for winter feed. Has anybody gotten sweet corn silage from a plant and stored it to feed in the winter. It has very high moisture content and I would be storing it in Late summer. If you had any luck tell me how you did it and would you do it again.

Thanks for the input.

chrisinsoky · Feb 13, 2010

i have mine on corn silage now, and feeding just grass hay with it(no corn or grain) and they are doin great, holdin weight good, putin it on for the 400lb + calves, (they do have trace minerals avaible too)

chrisinsoky · Feb 13, 2010

sorry mine just corn silage, i would give it a try though,

JayinNY · Feb 13, 2010

Im feeding ground corn/oat mix, dry hay and cow corn, and grass hay silage out of a silo, seems they like it.

LAA · Feb 13, 2010

It will give them something to chew on and thats about it. Before fuel got so high it was delivered for 3-4 bucks a ton around here, with hauling costs being what they are now days they can't give it away.

JMS/.MN · Feb 13, 2010

There"s a reason they give it away here. Just fodder, very little feed value. Doesn"t keep into summer with the high moisture level. OK for winter feeding to brood cows with energy/protein feeds.

MirageFlatter · Feb 14, 2010

Tell us more about what you're talking about. Is it true, field chopped, whole corn plant with ear, material to be packed and ensiled, or some low quality by product from a sweet corn cannery? We used to raise NK199 sweet corn for silage on farm program idle acres years ago when the farm programs allowed it. It didn't yield with field corn silage for tonnage, but made very good quality, very highly palatable silage for beef cattle. The last year we did that, we planted half the field to forage sorghum, the other half to sweet corn, and mixed the two together as we chopped. Made great silage, increased tonnage over straight sweet corn, much cheaper to raise and irrigate, made a good crop off of IDLE acres. Most silage in this area is piled and packed on top of the ground, a few folks have concrete bunkers or bunkers cut into a hillside, upright silos are non-existent here. The bagged silage is excellent feed, but not cost effective in the majority of operations.

willie in mn · Feb 14, 2010

Way back in the 40s/50s, most years my dad raised 10-15 acres of sweet corn for the local cannery. The sileage was husks & cobs, stacked at the plant. Policy was that each farmer was entitled to free sileage, his portion depending on the tonnage he produced. Cows seemed to like the sweeter feed, much like humans like sweet treats. If living too far from plant made hauling with horse drawn wagon not to be cost(time) effective, it was custom for a grower to sell his share to someone who lived closer.
In later years he topped off silo with chopped sweetcorn stalks & fed it first.
Also to make a richer feed, would plant his sileage patch with sugar cane in one box of planter, making alternate rows with field corn. Chopping with single row chopper would load it in layers in wagon box, blower would mix it. Cows loved the sweet mixture.
Was too young at the time to know if it was cost effective, but that's how he did it.
Willie

sammydwm · Feb 14, 2010

As a boy I grew up in a town with a cannery. There was always a long list of folks signed up to get that silage.
As an older kid I was around during one of the set aside programs. Dad set aside most of our corn ground then when he wasn't able to rent as much from the neighbors as he wanted, he found he was able to plant sweet corn in the set aside....Filled a 20x70 with it. Cows ate it and milked just as well as anything else. Don't think there was a great surge in production cuz we went back to field corn the next year.
As an older guy, we are into hobby farming now and I make the occasional garbage bag (or 20) of corn silage with leftover sweet corn. The cows like it but the goats could care less.

Bill(Wis) · Feb 14, 2010

We used to plant 60 acres or so of sweet corn every year under contract with a canning company. One year, the canning rep came by to tell us they had too much sweet corn and wouldn't be picking ours. So my dad and I chopped it and put it in the silo. When we hit that section of silage the milk production dropped dramatically. My dad told a few neighbors about it but it didn't get much publicity until, a few years later, one of the largest dairy operations tried sweet corn silage. Same thing. Dramatic drop in milk production. That owner called my dad and said: "I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it for myself." For dry cows, etc. I don't know. But for milking cows, around these parts, don't feed them sweet corn silage and if it is without the ears? Forget it for anything. Cows will milk better on alfalfa silage anyway. Feed your corn silage to the beefers and dry cows. That's all I know. We milked holsteins for 70+ years.

Leyland-270 · Feb 14, 2010

We were a dairy in Elroy WI and used to get some from the Reedsburg, WI cannery. It is not technically silage until it has a chance to ferment and it was typically too wet to ensilage. If you put it into a silo you can ruin the silo. The acids will eat at the joints and it will no longer be a silo. The only safe option is to use silage bags. We did not use bags we just fed it as we brought it home. What you are bring home is just the cob and husks along with some crushed and damaged kernels the made it through the system. We fed it along with other feed to keep protein up so production did not fall much but it did drop some. You could feed it as you bring it home and bale the unused pasture to get through the winter.

Sweet corn silage

jacksonduper

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chrisinsoky

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chrisinsoky

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JayinNY

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LAA

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JMS/.MN

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MirageFlatter

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willie in mn

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sammydwm

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Bill(Wis)

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Leyland-270

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