Franklin County Farmer Grows Quality
Alfalfa To Easily Meet Nutrition Needs
(CondniMd from Pago i) strategy. “Your bought feeds are
on his 125 acres of alfalfa. cheaper with high quality haylage,”
Gayman and his wife Sally farm said Gayman. “You don’t have to
400 acres in Waynesboro, where buy a lot of protein, and minerals
they milk 140 registered Holsteins. are cheaper.
The alfalfa haylage is a key part of “It is much easier to balance ra
their dairy ration, making up 60 tions with good roughages than with
percent of the forage base, which ac- grains,” he said. “It’s easier to get
counts for about 52 percent of the milk out of the cows, too.”
ration.
The Gaymans generally get about
four cuttings off their alfalfa stands
each year, which they keep for four
years. In the fifth year, the first cut
ting is harvested and the stand is
planted into corn.
' “I generally don’t push too hard
to get a fifth cutting,” said Gaylhan.
“I like to see a little growth there at
the end of the summer to help if we
get a heavy snow or anything.
“We like to see between 18 and 20
percent protein with our alfalfa,” he
said. “That generally has a relative
feed value of 130 to 140 percent, and
it is easier to feed that way.”
When the relative feed value goes
higher than 140, as it did with last
year’s fifth cutting, the Gaymans
have difficulty balancing the ration.
“We’re feeding our fifth cutting
right now, and it’s testing at 22 per
cent,” said Gayman. “We’re run
ning into fiber problems because the
relative feed value is too high.”
The quality of Cayman’s alfalfa
haylage is essential to his feeding
Cayman’s herd, which has the
prefix, “Gaymere,” averages 23,000
pounds of milk on two times a day
test with 4.0 percent fat and 3.2 per
cent protein.
Gayman has been farming most
of his life. He took over the farm in
1990 after farming in a partnership
with his father Harold and brother
Grant from 1978-1990, when his
father decided to retire and his
brother took a job as a milk inspec
tor at Maryland and Virginia Milk
Cooperative Association.
His father purchased the farm in
1960 when Gayman was in second
grade? “The farm we lived on was
split by Route 81, and we had 20
acres on the other side of the road
that were difficult to get to,” said
Gayman. “My dad’s criteria for
purchasing a farm was that it
should not have as many rocks as
the Greencastle farm.”
Cayman’s farm doesn’t have as
many rocks. In fact, the soil quality
is very good, according to Gayman.
It is mainly Hagerstown loam soil
Fbwfllng Around, Uftcittef Fanning, Saturday, July is, ZOOO-Pagg 3
with a little bit of Duffy in it.
The alfalfa is fertilized with a
liquid 10-20-10 commercial ferti
lizer on the second and third cut
ting. About every three years the
Caymans apply lime to all of their
ground.
“We generally get about seven to
eight tons of alfalfa on a hay equiva
lent basis each year,” said Cayman.
“We used to participate in the
Pennsylvania Forage and Grassland
Council’s alfalfa yield program, and
we had the top yield one year of
more than BV2 tons per acre.”
Although the Caymans haven’t
tried any leafhopper resistant varie
ties on the majority of their alfalfa
ground, they do have a couple of test
plots that Penn State is monitoring.
“We got involved with the test
plots through cooperative exten
sion,” said Cayman. “They planted
three plots this year and two last
year. The university comes out to do
yield checks every time I cut it.”
In addition to growing alfalfa, the
Caymans also grow corn and barley.
“We use corn in our rotation,” said
Cayman. “After the first cutting of
alfalfa is taken off in the fifth year,,
we plant it in corn silage. We also
have 20 acres of barley that we
mainly use for straw.”
According to Cayman, he does
better planting corn than he ever did
planting soybeans. “Last year, even
with the drought, we got 32 loads off
of the corn silage that was double
cropped behind the barley,” he said.
“It looked terrible, but it waited out
the dry weather and produced a
crop.”
In addition to his traditional
crops, Gayman also plants a couple
of rows of Indian com. “You can
really see how the hybrids have
helped us on a dry year,” he said.
“The Indian corn just doesn’t do
anything. But, on a normal year, it
really doesn’t show that much with
all of the fertility and soil samples
that we do.”
Both the corn silage and the hay
lage are stored in bunker silos on
Gaymere Farm. According to
Gayman, it’s easier to get in and out
of a bunker. There are also less
delays because of breakdowns than
with upright silos.
“If an unloader breaks down, we
just get one of the other tractors
with an unloader.”
The Caymans also like the
trenches because they’re not cutting
up the silage any more that it al
ready is. “We’re concerned about
the length of cut,” said Cayman,
who recently identified a low rumen
pH problem in his herd.
“The nutritionist wants to see the
length of cut at between 3 A to 1-inch
long, and apparently I cut it too
fine,” said Cayman. “It packs
tighter when it’s finer, but I need to
change my ways.”
Even though the component
levels in the milk were still high, the