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Minnesota farmer sees uneven silage crop

A custom forager in west-central Minnesota says he’s thankful a drawn-out silage harvest is complete.

Kirby Hettver of De Graaf tells Brownfield he’s part of a crew that puts up silage and haylage for area dairies.

“In the fields I was running the chopper in, you could definitely notice that mid-May planted versus late May (and) early June planted (corn). A little bit of difference in terms of the tonnage on each of those.”

He says the crop planted in mid-May was on par with last year, but later planted corn struggled all season.

“Right from the get-go with emergence, it definitely showed up. And spots that were water-logged to start with certainly continued (to be wet) throughout the season. You could really notice the variability from that standpoint.”

Hettver also grows field corn and soybeans and says he expects yields to be down because of adverse weather that started in the spring and has continued into the fall.