This is related to the "mowing stalks" post on crop talk but is more of a cattle question:

I was doing some calculations last night - if we assume that at 15% moisture grain corn there is 175 bu corn out there, a couple university studies say that if harvested for silage that would yield somewhere between 10 - 15 tons of wet silage per acre. I will use 10t.

Silage would be about 100% plant usage and 10t x 2000lb/t =20,000lb of silage.

Then IF by grazing in a restricted area the cattle can use even 1/3 of what they would if it was silage that would be about 7,000 lb useable grazing material.

IF a 1200lb cow consumes 3% of her body wt per day that is 36 lb/day

Then this acre of corn should give me in the neighborhood of 7,000lb/36lb/day = 194 cow-days of grazing??

If I can get anywhere close to that this will be worth the effort. If I can get up to 50% usage that would be even better.

Another way of looking at it is that 7,000 of hay would be about 5+ big bales and about $400. Also the hay would not have near the finishing on the cattle as the corn.

This Kaltenberg 4663 corn looks like it has more palletable stalks than some other varieties I've used so we'll see if the 1/3 number is in the ballpark or not.

Anyone have any comments or experience with these types of numbers? Am I close or in left field?

Jim at Dawn