There been a lot of market post on here lately and I heard this and I thought it had some valid points in the plus segment and I also posted the original segment as well, I kinda like Shawn as an analyst he seems decent.

I watch or tape that show every week. Not been good reports for Ag commodities the last few months and won't get better as farmers finaly start to move alot of 2023 crop to create room for the anticipated 3rd largest corn crop on record and beans are anticipated to be near record as well.. We are in an area where our corn is marginal which means more acres will go to silage, but with lower prices buying corn will be a transportation cost and not having to pay for expensive grain. Livestock, poultry and hogs are benefiting from the lower feed costs and there have been some more increases in the prices for feeders etc.

Bryce

Yeah stuff here is looking tuff, a lot is burning up now and the bottom and side hills aren’t good, all I can say is the crops in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, must be really good, been looking at feeders and man I think they must have gold in them somewhere.

Bottle calves do to.800.00 to 1,000.00 here for beef bottle calves.

Yep and it wasn’t that long ago they couldn’t give Holstein calves away.

The cost to produce Silage is getting to be so high and the cost of Corn so low that right now I cannot see how Silage even pencils out if you have to pay basically anything for it. Last year we chopped Silage and we had basically $80 a ton into it by the time we had it bagged, it would of been better and simpler to just feed corn which is what we are planning this year.

What Bryce is saying I believe is that instead of combining their corn they’ll chop it to get to feed as they can buy shelled corn cheaper.

Corn silage per ton of dry matter is the lower cost forage that is fed to dairy cows. High yields. 1 harvest, no winter kill issues. That is compared to alfalfa or hay which has many more variables and also harvests per year. Sure the cost of producing silage is high but then so is everything else. Corn silage allows the use of large amounts of liquid manure which our large dairies produce a lot of. Feeding high levels of corn to heavy milking large Holstein dairy cows is not an option. Dairy cows need a lot of forage to help create saliva which buffers their rumens so they don't get acidosis and other major issues. Cows can not be fed like fat cattle that will be slaughterd by the time they are 18 months. It is a balancing act for sure as we have many large herds producing 100 lbs. of milk per cow per day or more and the rations are border line as to the best rumen health. Around here many large dairies buy standing corn from area farmers. The rule of thumb is for average corn there is about 7 to 7.5 bushels of corn per ton of silage at 35% dry matter and that value is multiplied by a negotiated local price per bushel of corn. The dairies then harvest, store and pack that silage. So silage is never out of line with the price of corn and heavy feeding of corn is not an option. In fact many farmers are raising BMR varieties. (Brown Mid Rib corn) which is lower in grain and higher in digestable fiber and allows for less corn to be fed and less alfalfa which yields less per acre and costs more.

Bryce