Editor’s note: We are continuing our monthly series called Field Snapshot to provide you a view of what’s happening on farms in the region.

It’s been a long Thursday for Reid Hoover. Up at the crack of dawn to feed cows, he’s still going strong at 3 p.m. as the late-summer sun reflects off his worn-out sunglasses.

Hundreds of acres of corn silage are being chopped, hauled and packed away for cow feeding. “These are some long days,” he says with a laugh.

Hoover owns Brook Corner Holsteins, a 370-cow dairy with more than 400 heifers and young stock. He farms 650 acres in partnership with his son, Brad; a brother; and a nephew. Cows are milked three times a day. The farm’s rolling herd average is 30,000 pounds, with protein at 3.07% and butterfat near 4.0%.

Mother Nature hasn’t been kind to growers in the region. It was a dry, hot summer. So dry, in fact, that many dairy producers will have to buy feed to get the cows through winter and spring.

Hoover expected lower-than-normal yields, and that’s exactly what he is seeing thus far.

“We were hoping to get 20 tons to the acre. We’re a little under 20, and that’s well below what we’ve been averaging,” which has been 25 tons an acre, he says. Last year was especially good with tonnage hitting 29 tons an acre in some fields. “We didn’t get the height. The stalks are smaller. We just do not have the tonnage that we usually do,” he adds.

Earlage will also be way down from past years. And shelled corn, no chance.

“We always buy corn,” Hoover says. “We try to shell; that way we don’t have to buy as much. But not this year.”

Still, he’s upbeat about silage quality. “We tested some of the new stuff, and even though the yields are down, I think it’s testing well in terms of quality. We test for starch availability, digestibility. If the cows will make milk off it. I think it could be good,” he says. “Sometimes they say the dry years … the quantity is not as good, but the quality is pretty good.”

The milk price is doing well. His most recent mailbox price was $23 per cwt, and it’s been trending higher the past couple of months, he says.

Hoover uses bags, bunkers and silos to store his silage. Brown midrib corn, for example, is bagged and fed fresh. Silos store feed that’s mostly fed to heifers. The bunkers can take up to 70 acres of silage in one shot. It’s a lot for Hoover and the rest of the farm crew, so he hires custom harvesters to do much of the work.

“Our machine is older and doesn’t have the capacity,” he says. “ It would take us three times longer to get one of these filled. And we’re hauling a distance, and they have the carts. They’re hauling 15, 20 tons at a shot. We just don’t have the equipment to do this kind of capacity.”