Silage harvesting season is upon us once again and everyone is busy asking themselves the usual questions: “Is that field ready yet?”, “How much Nitrogen did I put on?”, “Is it growing six weeks or seven?”

We all like a good bulk of silage, whether it’s pit or bales. Knowing that we have enough fodder saved for the incoming winter gives us a great peace of mind. No one wants to be starting into February next year starring at the back wall on the pit. But in the argument of quality versus quantity, for me quality always wins hands down.

I know the level of quality needed will vary from farm to farm, as will cutting date. A dry suckler cow can be carried over the winter on a lot lower percentage DMD silage than a finishing animal or a lactating dairy cow.

When I say quality silage I mean 70% DMD plus. One of the targets that was set for my farm when I was participating in the BETTER Farm Beef Programme was to improve the quality of the silage being made.

Performance

Increasing average DMD form 68% to around 74% made a huge difference to wintering cows. Although I did feed meal at the same level, weanling heifers achieved a higher daily live weight gain and lactating suckler cows produced more milk and held condition better. This obviously had the knock-on effect of better calf performance and left cows easier to get back in calf.

When you have quality, you have options. The pit may not be as big as usual or there may not be as many bales in the yard, but stock won’t need as much to maintain themselves and if fed ad lib will perform much better. It’s only a matter of contenting ourselves to this fact and not panicking.

Supplement

When feeding poor to average quality silage 60-65% DMD, the only option you have is to feed silage ad lib and probably feed meal as well to achieve any kind of performance. Feeding a beef animal 60-68% DMD silage alone will at best result in a daily gain of 0.4kgs/day, however the same animal on 80-82% DMD silage will gain 0.8kg/day.

In short for every 5% drop in DMD% 1.5-2kg of meal will need to be included in the diet to maintain performance.

A silage crop will on average use two units of nitrogen per day, therefore a crop that received 100 units will be ready for cutting 50 days after it was closed. Allowing grass to grow for more than seven weeks will make for a bulkier crop but will also have a serious effect on quality.

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