Cereal Silage Options for Western Canada

Cereal crops provide producers with a lot of options that allow the producer to balance silage yield, quality, harvesting and storage. Producers must look at species, varieties and mixtures as ways of controlling silage quality. In monocrops, the stage of harvest should be at the soft-dough stage. In mixtures, the later maturing component at the soft-dough stage will give highest yield and energy and if harvested when the earliest component is at the soft-dough stage, protein content will increase. Disease factors are important considerations. Rotate your crops and varieties to guard against the build up of new diseases or disease races.