| | Cereal crops provide a lot of options that allow producers to balance silage yield, quality, harvesting and storage. Producers must look at species, varieties, mixtures and stage of cut as ways of controlling silage quality.
Factors to consider when selecting a variety for silage:
- Yield
- Quality
- Disease factors
- Lodging resistance/ Straw strength
- Rough or smooth awn
Biomass yield
While grain yield is generally considered to be a pretty good indicator of biomass yield, there are always some exceptions. For instance Seebe (two-rowed barley) or Dillon (hooded barley), do not have that high of grain yields, but their biomass yields tend to be among the highest of the barley varieties. The six-rowed non-semi-dwarf barley varieties still tend to be our highest biomass producers, although Vivar six-row semi-dwarf barley is relatively high yielding as well.
Figure 1. Yield and relative feed value of barley silage, Field Crop Development Centre data, 2003-2005.
Quality
Quality is going to depend upon the amount of leaf and head material relative to stems. The more leaf material, the higher will be digestibility and protein. The more stems the higher will be NDF. And the more head material, the more starch and protein. The amount of each will depend on the variety and the stage of cutting, with later cuts having more heads and less leaf relative to the stems (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Percent leaf, stem and spike of barley, oat, and triticale varieties.
Disease resistance
Disease resistance means more leaf area so higher quality: resistance to net blotch and scald in barley; tan spot in triticale; stripe rust in both. Disease resistance means less toxic chemicals: resistance to Fusarium Head Blight (FHB) reducing Deoxynivalenol (DON).
Lodging resistance
Semi-dwarf varieties like Kasota, Vivar, Falcon, Tyto and CDC Earl tend to have better lodging resistance than tall or standard height barley cultivars. Triticale has excellent straw strength.
Awn type
Rough awns have been associated with mouth lesions in cattle, however there is no data to indicate that the awns are causing the lesions. If ensiled at the soft dough stage a rough awned barley should pose no risk of increased incidence of lesions. In triticale, two new awnletted spring varieties (Tyndal and Bunker) have just gone through registration and should be available to producers in 2008.
Conclusion
Silage mixtures, even with different varieties of the same species, means you can take advantage of the strengths of a number of varieties. A mixture of maturities can lengthen the harvest window (moisture content of later maturing varieties can act to ensile the early material). A strong strawed variety can hold up the mixture.
Patricia Juskiw, Field Crop Development Centre
June 7, 2006 |
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