Milk prices are down, and this is putting a squeeze on dairy farmers and their ability to purchase concentrate to maintain milk production.

One advantage of being around a long time (I once milked mammoths) is that I have seen this before. It doesn’t make it any more pleasant, though.

The early 1980s were very hard times with many farms not making it. We had a repeat scenario in 2014 when grain prices went through the roof. We are seeing a version of this again this year.

Ironically, the breakthrough we had in early 2000 is still viable today. The key has been to feed cows as cows. They are fiber digesters, and the more digestible forage that is in the diet, the greater the benefit.

Many farms we have worked with have documented higher components as they switched to highly digestible fiber diets from forage. They also got more money for their milk.

Healthier cows lead to reduced culling, which means less heifers needed to maintain herd numbers. In a study of farms with high-forage diets, Larry Chase, emeritus professor of animal science at Cornell University, also found fewer metabolic disorders and acidosis. This means fewer foot problems and lower vet costs. The lower vet costs are definitely noticeable on farms we have worked with.

In our work, as well as work done by Chase, we have also found a significant increase in income over feed costs. In other words, the bottom line got better. A group of farms where highly digestible fiber diets are critical are organic dairies. Their grain costs are tremendously high. Substituting highly digestible fiber forage can meet the animals’ needs for high production without sending much of the milk check to someone else.

How much should you feed?

Forage feeding level is not something you magically pull out of the air and start stuffing into cows. The percent of neutral detergent fiber feeding depends on the size of the cow and the weighted NDF of the forage that is being fed.

Achieving profitability in a high-forage diet takes two people: the farmer who makes the forage and the nutritionist who balances the ration.

The nutritionist, if they are on board, can only be as good as the forage they have to feed. The forage program is critical in getting forage quality to the mouth of the cow.

I have seen the cost of nutrients from forage be much less than from concentrate. Of course, if you farm with no soil test, have a better equipment lineup than the machinery dealer, and rely on a harvest go-by date like your grandpa did — that is, laying the haylage in a windrow to compost dry over three days — the cost of your nutrients from forage could be higher.

All about the soils

It may shock a few nutritionists, but soils drive the rotation, which drives what the cows are fed. One farm I worked with was growing 60% haylage and 40% corn silage, the best rotation for the soil type. The nutritionist was feeding 60% corn silage and 40% haylage, and they wondered why they were always running out of one of the feeds.

You need enough forage, and all of it must be high quality to support maximized feeding. As a farmer, you need to grow quality digestible fiber that is best adapted to your soil and environment. This is why we developed best management practices for alternative crops that are proven to produce high-quality, highly digestible forage, like wide-swath same-day haylage, flag leaf winter triticale forage, male sterile BMR sorghum with enhanced nutrition, red clover and highly digestible cool-season grasses.

Each can support high-forage diets but are also adapted to soils or environments where alfalfa or corn may not do as well.

Grain types for silage or dual-purpose types for corn silage are 1950s technology that can only support a low-forage diet. Growing appropriate-season, high-fiber, soft-kernel corn varieties allow it to be harvested at optimum quality instead of waiting a month after everyone else started before you can chop wet butyric stuff.

That promised extra yield is not worth it and simultaneously kills the profitable crop that hundreds of farmers have tapped by following a slightly shorter-season corn with high-quality winter triticale forage.

Harvesting haylage by wide-swath same-day practices allows faster harvest and has been proven to increase the energy level of your alfalfa by 25% to nearly that of corn silage. This supports higher forage feeding, which supports much higher milk production from your haylage.

Mowing directly to a windrow and then composting it for two to three days to reach 35% dry matter before chopping will never get you to high forage feeding. Corn silage variety and haylage harvest method are factors you can control.

Get nutritionist on board

Your nutritionist needs to be fully on board with this. One farm we worked with thought they were feeding high forage until we looked at the ration. The nutritionist had it balanced for a 1,350-pound animal. The farmer and his wife checked all their cows and found the average was 1,600 pounds per cow; it was not a high-forage diet.

For this to work, you must start with accurate, not guessed, numbers. Another nutritionist I knew who didn’t want it to work simply threw in more forage without rebalancing the ration. He knew it would crash the cows, then he could say it does not work. Some give the excuse that their computer doesn’t go that high.

The bottom line is that many excellent dairy nutritionists have the skill, experience and drive to meet your farm’s objective of highly digestible forage by feeding the highest fiber you can produce. If yours doesn’t, find one that will.

Manage what can be managed

You must take steps to increase forage.

Produce a good amount of forage from timely harvest. Then, preserve it by using a proper inoculant. Finally, pack it in. These steps are all about management, not something you buy. The cows will start eating better-quality forage.

Chase recommends a 2% increase at a time, rebalancing the ration at every step. The cows may slightly decrease due to change and then significantly increase production after that, but they will do it eating more forage. As you work with your nutritionist to step up forage feeding levels, the cows will adjust and eat more.

Keep in mind that you will also have to adjust your management. Dumping highly digestible fiber in the rumen enables it to quickly flow through and out of the rumen before the nutrients can be fully digested and utilized.

Work by Rick Grant of Miner Institute has found that as forage digestible fiber increases, the length of cut needs to increase. A three-quarter-inch to 1-inch length of cut will increase the physically effective NDF for a better rumen mat and greater extent of digestion before it is washed out of the rumen. A 1-inch length will not increase sorting.

For highly digestible forages like winter triticale at flag leaf stage or enhanced male sterile BMR sorghum, the increased length of cut has the added benefit of dramatically reducing silo leachate. As our winter forage yields have increased to 4, 5 and now 6 tons of dry matter per acre, it is increasingly difficult to dry for ensiling. The 1-inch length of cut and increased moisture allows it to be successfully ensiled without nutrients leaching out of the silo (wet forage is not suggested for upright silos).

You can burn through a lot of highly digestible fiber without getting the nutrient benefit if you short cut it. Adding a small amount of chopped straw will just band-aid the issue, but the long-term answer is to increase the length of chop at harvest.

Transitioning to a forage diet that is high quality will allow cows to consume 32% more forage while producing equal or more milk, and clearly more components from healthier cows.

It may seem like common sense, but you must produce it before you feed it. Farmers are often shocked to see how fast the end of the forage supply comes when feeding a high-forage diet. But when it is all put together, the shift in profitability is impressive.

Kilcer is a certified crop adviser in Rutledge, Tenn., formerly of Kinderhook, N.Y.