Farmers embrace wetter silage

“We have proven everybody wrong, and the hectares continue to grow from Canterbury right down through Southland,” Craig says.

In 2021, Craig was approached by Hyprecision Ag to represent their BRIXX lineup of shortday silage maize on the South Island.

Simultaneously, the Claas Harvest Centre in Wanaka began distributing Hyprecision’s trademarked Edge dry inoculant technology.

The combined results, according to Craig, have been nothing short of staggering for South Island farmers.

Mike Hende, Agraforum Consulting in Ashburton, who supports the shift to maize silage, believes South Island farmers will plant around 2000ha of BRIXX maize this year with every tonne treated with Edge inoculant.

So, what is better with wetter feed?

“Guys in Otago, South Canterbury and Southland see the results in the milk vat. It’s that simple,” says Craig.

“The labs reports don’t lie. Since we have been testing our samples using CFA (Canterbury Feed Assessments), we have consistently seen fibre digestibility that routinely hits 65% (neutral detergent fibre digestibility 30).

“That alone is a 20% increase in total digestibility versus the national average of 53,” Craig points out.

Hyprecision director of sales Michael Henne explains that fibre digestibility of 65% is essentially a 20% increase in yield – over average digestibility.

Henne worked as a dairy nutritionist in the US and invented the Edge product and its globally- patented applicator system for harvesters and bailers. Henne claims that the Brixx/Edge combination is rapidly becoming the new standard for making feed. “The rate of adoption is higher on the South Island, but the adoption is happening on the North Island as well,” he says.

“When I arrived to New Zealand in 2020, we had large American-style applicators and a container of product. Everyone was curious about Edge, but there was a great deal of scepticism around our wetter feed/ dry inoculant mindset.”

Henne says it was Ingram Engineering (Tuakau) and Mike Kettle Contracting (Hawke’s Bay) that really gave Hyprecision its start and ultimately allowed the company to showcase the Edge technology and its impact on milk production.

“Because we can make both grass and maize at virtually any level of dry matter the Edge product completely shifted the harvest window.”

He believes the wettest feed produced last year was grass bales at 14% dry matter. “They looked like pancakes, but they fed out beautifully,” he says.

Happy Accident

Michael Henne says Hyprecision never really had any intention of selling maize seed in New Zealand.

“It was a happy accident,” he claims.

“It happened because I kept trying to understand why farmers were growing high lignin grain corn instead of more efficient silage maize.

“To my surprise, most of them did not fully appreciate the important differences between a silage variety and a grain variety of maize.”

A farmer challenged Henne to demonstrate the superiority of silage maize by bringing some to the market.

“And so we did,” he says.

US Technology

Michael Henne and his family operate Hyprecision US, which largely mirrors the New Zealand business but with a slight twist.

In America, the company sells the BREVANT brand, which is one of the brands under the Corteva umbrella.

“American farmers are more focused on digestible tonnage,” Henne explains.

“For manure management reasons in the CAFO (confined animal feeding) setting alone, my American farmers cannot afford to feed maize that is 50% manure.”