Drought, some hail, and even some grasshoppers wiped out a lot of pastures and damaged many acres of row crops this summer. Maybe you had to stretch your forage supplies to the limit to feed your cattle. But now you have a new source of feed because you chopped drought damaged corn or beans or some other crop early for silage. If this describes you and your silage, don't be in a hurry to feed it. It could contain nitrates!

Many times, crops stressed by drought or other factors will contain high levels of nitrates. Making these crops into silage is one good way to reduce toxicity of these nitrates because the fermentation process usually reduces the nitrate content of this feed.

However, during the first few days of early fermentation the chopped forage begins to heat, converting those nitrates first into nitrites. And, nitrites are as much as ten times more poisonous to cattle than nitrates. Later, these nitrites are neutralized and converted into other compounds that make them less toxic.

So, if you feed your freshly chopped forage before it has completed its full fermentation cycle, you risk giving your cattle highly poisonous forage filled with nitrites. This problem is avoided with two simple steps. First, wait three or four weeks after chopping before feeding fresh silage. And two, test your silage for nitrates before feeding. Then feed accordingly.

Having crops and pastures damaged by drought and hail is bad enough. Don't make it worse by feeding toxic silage to your cattle.