In some parts of the country it’s common to feed meal to dry cows. Whether this is necessary or not depends on the quality of the silage, the body condition score of the cows and the length of the dry period. See Table 1 for a breakdown of requirements. The key thing is to know your silage quality and you’ll only know this for sure by getting it tested. As Ciaran Lenehan explains here, some of the feed manufacturers now have portable devices for measuring silage quality so you don’t have to send samples away to a lab. Remember, when taking silage samples, either use a core and work from the top of the pit, or take samples from the pit face in a “W” shape. Discard the first sample at each point, because the dry matter of exposed silage may be different to the actual dry matter of the rest of the pit.

Soil sampling

Sticking with sampling, December is the month for taking soil samples. If there was ever a year to address soil fertility then this is it. Fertiliser prices haven’t been as low in years, farmers have access to lower cost credit and milk price is looking better for next year. Soil sampling is relatively cheap, so every paddock should be sampled to get an accurate picture of where your farm is. Some people are wondering if fertiliser should be bought now before prices move up again as some analysts believe fertiliser is about to increase in price.

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Instant silage analysis