Success stories

Name: Samuel Goering

Location: Dayton, Virginia, USA

Size: 230 Holstein cows and 240 replacement heifers

Inoculant: MAGNIVA Silver

  Samuel Goering is an expert at seed selection for his corn, barley and triticale farm near Dayton, Va. As a King’s AgriSeeds dealer, he chooses hybrids and products tailored to forage production and plants staggered maturities to widen his harvest window. He milks 230 Holstein cows and runs about 240 replacement heifers with his son, Conrad, who has been a full-time partner for about five years. They harvest the farm’s corn acres on their own — all of which becomes silage destined for the dairy herd and stored in upright silos and bags. In the spring, they put up triticale silage and soft-dough barley silage, which are stored in bags. “The greatest challenge is in the spring where we have a shorter harvest window on maturity. We don’t want it to go too long in the field. Rain can delay us enough to lower the quality,” Samuel said. “Last year, we had a drought in the summer. We ended up having to buy a fair amount of feed.” Protecting value Samuel used inoculants to help protect his forage investment for many years. He experimented with applicators, dry inoculants and water-soluble products. He found the best combination for his operation is his current set-up: a dry, granular inoculant combined with a Dohrmann Enterprises applicator, installed on the silo blower and bagger. This pairing allows harvest flexibility and fast application. For the past three haylage crops, Samuel used MAGNIVA Silver forage inoculant to help prevent butyric acid production and made sure the crop was packed well, to remove air pockets that can cause spoilage. “Previously, we used other products with mixed results. With MAGNIVA, we are seeing consistent quality forage coming out of our silos and bags,” he said. “There were times we would have problems staying ahead of the heat that would go through the bag as fast as you could chase it. MAGNIVA Silver gives us more up-front fermentation and a little more protection at the time of feedout when that face the bag or silo is exposed to air.” Managing against loss As previously noted, the Goerings also make sure the crop is well-packed to help eliminate pockets of air. They also use a quality covering film to help prevent oxygen exposure during early fermentation and storage. Oxygen stimulates yeast and mold activities, which can result in spoilage losses, refusals or even production and health problems in the herd. “You don’t want to put moldy feed in front of a cow,” he explained. “We feel like we are feeding a much better product than if we were not using an inoculant. We are feeding some purchased silage right now, and we can’t wait to get back to our own feed.” Starting with good forage is key to achieving Samuel’s goal of feeding quality silage that retains as much value as possible and reduces the need for purchasing feed and supplements, which can lower the farm’s overall profitability. “You want to preserve that forage,” he said. “The inoculant will not make the crop any better than the day it was chopped, but you want to preserve it. You can speed up fermentation, reduce dry matter loss and end up with a better product to feed to the cows. I want to preserve what I’ve got.”

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.”