During the winter of 2022-23, Sand County Foundation began working with three farmers in Wisconsin’s Sheboygan and Ozaukee counties who were inter-seeding cover crops early into their corn silage crop to maximize soil cover while minimizing yield decline. Each had some experience with adding other species to their corn silage and diversifying their rotations, but none knew exactly how it was affecting the feed quality for their dairy cows.

Sand County Foundation partnered with the farmers to process feed samples and track their management to demonstrate how adding cover crops to their corn and sorghum silage impacts feed quality.

While cover crop use in Wisconsin has slowly increased, use by dairy farmers on silage corn acreage is not often considered as an opportunity to increase silage biomass, improve livestock health, or offset costs.

Our "grower showcase" features management details on how the farms accomplished growing crops in this innovative fashion. This project allows farmers to learn from each other in order to improve management for next year. It is a cross effort between networking, on-farm research, and soil health improvement on the farm.

Feed quality results and outreach will be released after the first phase of the project concludes during the summer of 2025.

Do you have more ideas on creative ways to include diversification of cropping and livestock onto your farm? Would you like to learn more? Contact Sand County Foundation’s Agricultural Systems Director, Tricia Verville, to join the discussion tverville@sandcountyfoundation.org