Many seasoned farmers would raise eyebrows at the notion of a corn crop in Central Queensland, but one beef producer is hoping for solid rewards from his maiden trial.
John Rodger, Hatcham Downs, Taroom, took a leap of faith and planted 65 hectares of corn in January to service his private on-farm feedlot and said energy levels from the silage were highly valuable.
“It’s higher in energy than other silage and feedlot cattle generally eat to an energy requirement, so the more energy in the ration the less they eat while doing the same job,” he said.
Mr Rodger said regardless of commodity type, all feeds were valued on their energy level and after “doing the math” corn silage worked out to be most cost effective.
“This silage is worth about $90/t rolled and covered in the pit and grain is worth about $270/t in the silo, but because there’s so much energy value in corn silage, the dollar value of its energy works out almost the same as sorghum,” he said.
“Corn is worth 10 per cent more than sorghum on a food value and energy basis.”
Further explaining his decision to plant corn, Mr Rodger said the moisture level in corn silage was another desirable trait.
“You don’t have to have silage for a feedlot ration but it is highly desirable as it brings the moisture up to an ideal level,” he said.
“You could add hay for roughage but then you need to add water which is just more buggering around.
“The moisture level in the ration should be about 30 per cent for digestibility and corn silage takes you straight there.”
Despite all its positives, Mr Rodger said it had been touch and go for the crop when Hatcham Downs recorded 200 millimetres of rain in 10 days early in the season.
“Corn is tricky because it can’t have any setbacks whereas forage sorghum is much more forgiving to floods and dry weather- it shakes it off and gets going again,” he said.
“We’ll get about 35t/hectare in the parts that survived the flood and 50t/hectare where floodwater didn’t lie.
“Corn is supposedly a better quality silage but it’s expensive to grow- this corn cost us about $600/hectare for seed and fertiliser alone and we’ve had to write off half the crop as a bad joke because we’ll get no production where it flooded.”
Mr Rodger said the corn silage would be stockpiled until next summer due to a lack of need at present and also the influence of low returns with feedlotting.
“It’s no secret that feedlotting margins are minimal at the moment with a tough export market and the domestic store market high,” he said.
“Export weight finisher cattle of 600kg eat about 15kg of finisher ration a day from start to finish, with 14 per cent of that being silage.
“In another few weeks our feedlot will be full at 2400 head. While it hasn’t been a good year for a trial I’ll grow another crop of corn to see if I can pull a good one off and it’ll be interesting to see cattle perform on it in large numbers when the time comes.”
