Technical Article by Shaver

Corn Silage Evaluation:  MILK2000 Challenges and Opportunities with MILK2006  

Written by Randy Shaver, Professor and Extension Dairy Nutritionist, Department of Dairy Science, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, University of Wisconsin – Madison and UW– Extension

An index of forage quality, milk per ton of forage DM (Undersander et al., 1993), was developed using an energy value of forage predicted from ADF content and DMI potential of forage predicted from NDF content as its basis. The milk per ton quality index was later modified for corn silage (Schwab et al., 2003) using an energy value derived from summative equations (Schwab et al., 2003; NRC, 2001) and DMI predicted from both NDF content (Mertens, 1987) and digestibility (NDFD, % of NDF; Oba and Allen, 1999b) as its basis. This milk per ton quality index (MILK2000; Schwab et al., 2003) has become a focal point for corn silage hybrid performance trials and hybrid breeding programs in academia and the seed-corn industry (Lauer et al., 2005). Find an update on MILK2006 here.