In the world of modern agriculture, a giant pile of corn silage is no longer just feed. It’s a complex data set. As farmers face volatile markets and erratic weather, the ability to quickly decode the nutritional value of their crops is crucial.
Dairyland Laboratories, a third-party contract testing facility celebrating 67 years in the industry, has seen this evolution firsthand. What began as a local operation in Wisconsin has gone global. Dairyland Labs operates in 26 countries and processes over 400,000 samples annually. This scale allows the lab to compare crop data from Northern Wisconsin to Saudi Arabia. It ensures that their calibrations stay ahead of changing seed genetics and climate shifts.
The most significant shift has been the transition from traditional “wet chemistry” to Near Infrared Spectrometry (NIR), explains Matthew Fenske, the business development manager. This jump in technology has tripled the amount of information available to growers while reducing the price and turnaround time.
“Those constituents that we’d be doing of 30 right now, if we did those all by chemistry, would be about three to four weeks in the lab and around $500 worth of testing,” says Fenske. “We do that same thing on the NIR instruments now… for about $30, and it takes about three to four hours in the lab.”
This price drop has fundamentally changed how farmers manage their inventory. Rather than taking one expensive sample to represent an entire year’s feed, growers can now test multiple areas of a silage pile. This approach can account for field-to-field variability and fermentation changes.
The precision also extends to the animal’s diet. While labs used to focus on basic crude protein, they now analyze individual amino acids, allowing nutritionists to tweak diets with precision. This level of detail can help farmers navigate a tough economic landscape.
“Milk prices aren’t terribly favorable right now… so really making sure that there’s quality purchases being made on the commodity side,” Fenske notes, emphasizing that “not all canola meal is created equal.”
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