“Corn Picker for Corn Silage” is an Excel spreadsheet program that more accurately determines a superior corn silage hybrid based on all relevant costs and returns that affect corn silage and dairy nutrition. It can be localized to specific farm situations or one can use a standard set of costs such as “Estimated Costs of Crop Production in Iowa-2009” FM-1712 and “Livestock Enterprise Budget for Iowa-2009” FM-1815. Both are available from ISU County Extension Offices.

Ranking of hybrids for total farm net profit gives considerably different results than using “Milk2006” per acre.