Grass silage

Name: Vander Groef

Location: Northern New Jersey, USA

Size: 100 Holstein cows

Inoculant: MAGNIVA Titanium

  Jeff and Tracy Vander Groef milk about 100 Holstein cows in Northern New Jersey. Just an hour from New York City, the farm is a true family operation. Two of their sons joined the operation full time and a third is working part time while finishing high school. To help control costs, the family focuses on keeping feed expenses down by feeding mostly forages they produce themselves. In good growing years, the Vander Groef family can sell extra forages. “We grow more than we need in a good year,” Jeff Vander Groef said. “This year was one of those tougher years. We had a very serious drought. We had to chop half our grain corn for silage in order to have enough silage. Thus, forcing us to have to buy enough other corn to make enough high moisture corn (HMC) to feed.” In addition to HMC, he grows alfalfa and grass for haylage. Haylage isn’t an easily fermentable crop, which led Vander Groef to change his approach to ensiling and focus on management to help maintain quality. He switched to bunker silos, always uses a forage inoculant and covers with a weather- and oxygen-barrier to prevent spoilage and minimize losses. This focus on reducing waste helps the family ensure better quality haylage at feed out and retain as much quantity as possible to help reduce purchased feed costs. The Vander Groef family also runs a King’s AgriSeeds dealership, which helps in sourcing corn varieties. He selects seeds that have good digestible fiber when planting, and then focuses on ensiling management to minimize dry matter (DM) losses. Microbial inoculation for protection In previous years, the farm applied propionic acid to HMC at ensiling. The HMC continued to heat during the summer, and the Vander Groefs battled mold issues. Searching for solutions, he tried MAGNIVA Forage Inoculants from Lallemand Animal Nutrition three years ago and treated one bag as a test. “We had excellent results,” Vander Groef said. “The silage stayed very cool in the bag, and we had no issues with mold. It made me a believer. This year, we chopped a lot of drought-stressed corn and treated everything. We wanted to eliminate possible issues with forage that wasn’t top quality to begin with.” He applied MAGNVIA Titanium to all 2022 forages. The inoculant contains Lactobacillus buchneri NCIMB 40788 and high-activity enzymes. The high-dose rate L. buchneri NCIMB 40788 is the only silage inoculant reviewed by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to allow claims for improved aerobic stability. The farm milks twice a day and feeds once a day, making bunk stability important. “With stable forages, we don’t get heating in the feed bunk — especially in the summer months,” Vander Groef explained. “That feed is in front of the cows until the next afternoon, so you want to make sure the forage is good and stable. In the summertime, the bunk can heat up. Then you lose intakes. Stable forage that is still cool 22 to 24 hours after it’s put in the bunk is the other piece of the puzzle that’s worth the investment.” The past year, Vander Groef noted his herd’s overall reproductive efficiency improved. “There are so many things that can factor into that, but I’m happy to eliminate mold issues in the feed as one potential cause,” he said. “Inoculant isn’t cheap, but it’s worth it. With recent growing conditions, we haven’t had the best forages going in. We have to protect whatever quality we have.”