Organic Dairy Farmer Proves MC’s Starch Availability by Larry Hawkins
www.byron seeds.net
Three years ago (2010), Dave Kallemeyn, a southwestern Minnesota dairy farmer, had
read about Masters Choice hybrids in Byron Seeds, LLC’s ads in the Dairy Star that crossed his
desk and wanted to give MC a try. Dave, who has been Certified Organic for about seven years,
also came up with a great way to test Byron’s claims of both more digestible fiber and more
available starch. He filled his two silage bag each half full with his usual corn in the front of
each bag and the new Masters Choice in the back of each bag. The bags were marked at the
junction of the two corns. This would make for a double “switchback” feeding design that
would tell him on his farm which corn was best.
The corn he planted that first year was MC490UT, a 94 day relative maturity corn known
for its white cob and its bin-busting yields and strong agronomics. The corn was to be harvested
as snaplage and placed in 8 foot diameter silage bags. When the time came to open the first bag,
everything went along normally with production and butterfat test until Dave got to the Masters
Choice. Upon starting into the MC snaplage, the 75 cows went up 1100#’s (on every other day
pickup) or between 6 and 7 pounds per cow/day!
When it came time to open the second bag and resume feeding his original snaplage, the
cows responded in the opposite way and returned to their old (about 60#’s) milk levels. After the
first half of the bag was fed and he started feeding the Masters Choice, again the cows went back
up in milk!
What was this worth to Dave? Just using 6 pounds of milk at $30/cwt for Certified
Organic milk, equals $2.40/cow. For Dave’s average of 75 cows in milk per day this equals
$180/day or over $60,000/year! This is a pretty good return with no other identifiable changes in
his management or feeding practices. This doesn’t even include the fact the butterfat test went
up by .2% and the protein went up 0.1% also. Dave concluded, “If you’re gonna feed it, better
make sure you have Masters Choice.”
This Holland, MN dairyman is not one to “push” his cows, and as with many Certified
Organic dairymen who find Organic corn difficult to grow (and expensive to buy) limits the
snaplage, which is a high quality combination of corn silage and corn grain, to about 20 to 24#’s
as-fed per cow per day in his non-pasture TMR diet. No other corn or corn silage is fed. Dave
who has limited acres that are both available to buy or rent and are certified, has to, in some
years, buy corn to keep his pasture acres and corn hay rotations going.
This feeding trial really demonstrates the available energy in Masters Choice hybrids.
Cows that are not full-fed (i.e. not being pushed to get 100#’s of milk or more) respond quickly
to improvements in available forage energy in more ways than just in milk production. They
also are more able to maintain body condition and reproductive efficiency, both conditions that
Dave has seen.
Masters Choice has been bred to exhibit higher sugar levels which in turn provide both
higher fiber digestibility and higher starch availability. This combined with competitive yields
Organic Dairy Farmer Proves MC’s Starch Availability by Larry Hawkins
www.byron seeds.net
make MC corn a very profitable choice. These advantages are provided by the large root
structures (to absorb more fertility), the wide arching leaves (to collect more sunlight to produce
the sugar), dense, heavy, sugar-filled stalks (to provide more tons and more digestibility), and
flex ears and stalks (to provide more yield at lower planting populations).
Last year, 2013, was a particularly good year for Dave. His 102-day MC5250 produced
at around 190 bushels to the acre and his 83-day MC468 produced 165 bushels as measured by
his crop insurance agent. The agent remarked that Dave did better than his conventional–
farming neighbors! Good crop rotations and Masters Choice corn hybrids can make a huge
difference.