Choosing which variety of corn to plant for corn silage is a decision that can affect your farm profits by thousands of dollars each year. Dr. Mike Allen prefers the use of a partial budget comparing a defender and challenger variety that considers the difference in quality as well as yield. He developed CornPicker® for Silage (1.0), a partial budget Excel spreadsheet that takes into account factors specific to your farm in the corn silage selection process.
Read an article explaining CornPicker® in detail and see an example of how it is used here.
Download CornPicker® here, and compare your own “Challenger” and “Defender” varieties.