Preliminary Silage Yields for the UW Corn Hybrid Evaluation Trials

Corn harvest is well underway with 32% of Wisconsin corn acreage harvested for grain as of October 17 (USDA-NASS). Corn is mostly mature (96%) with 68% good to excellent.

Preliminary corn silage yield for hybrids in the UW Corn Hybrid Evaluation program averaged across all locations was 10.6 T DM/A at 62.9% forage moisture (Table 1). Good yields were observed in spite of drought conditions at many locations. The highest yielding location was Arlington at 12.0 T DM/A averaged across 195 plots. 

Corn silage drydown was faster than normal. Two weeks prior to harvest, we inspected all trials and determined a typical start-date for harvest. However,  forage moisture proved drier than normal at many sites, although the overall average of 62.9% which was close to our target moisture of 65%.

  Table 1. Preliminary Silage Yields for the 2021 UW Corn Hybrid Evaluation Trials.

 

We are currently grinding and running forage quality analysis on all samples collected. Final results will be available in November.