Recent research conducted at the Agri Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI) has found cattle need more feed to put on weight than previously thought.

At an event at Greenmount last Wednesday, Dr Francis Lively from AFBI said that maintenance energy figures which are used for formulating diets have been revised upwards by 20%.

He gave the example of a 400kg steer which would have required a dry matter intake of 8kg to meet its maintenance requirements under previous calculations.

However, AFBI research now indicates that the animal actually needs around 9.5kg of dry matter to meet its basic energy demand.

“This is important because once the energy for maintenance is supplied, surplus energy is transferred to lean growth or fat deposition,” Lively said.

The beef researcher said making good quality silage should be a key area of focus for livestock farmers at this time of year.

He compared a typical silage from a two-cut system with a D-value of 63 to a silage in a three-cut system which has 71 D-value.

Along with 2.5kg of concentrate, an animal will consume 6.3kg of the 63 D-value silage and will have a daily liveweight gain of 0.96kg/day.

When the same level of concentrate is offered with the 71 D-value forage, silage intake is 6.9kg and daily liveweight gain is 1.18kg.

Lively said for the lower D-value silage to match that level of weight gain, it requires concentrate feed levels to be doubled to 5kg.

Allowing sunlight to reach the base of the sward is crucial for establishing clover, CAFRE adviser Robert Patterson has said.

Speaking at a CAFRE/UFU event last week, Patterson outlined learnings from a four-year project which aimed to incorporate clover into grazing swards across the CAFRE farm.

He said young clover seedlings can appear delicate, so there can be a reluctance to graze the sward too close in case the seedlings get damaged by livestock.

However, this can often end up being counter-productive as high residual covers can lead to seedlings being shaded out by other grasses.

“Getting trampled by livestock is not the biggest threat to a clover seedling. The biggest problem a clover plant often faces is not getting enough sunlight,” he said.

The advice from Patterson is to graze a new clover sward every 18-21 days and aim for a low post-grazing residual cover.

Grazing the sward off well in mid to late November is also recommended, although care needs to be taken to avoid excessive poaching.

But before all that, soil fertility needs to be addressed prior to sowing clover. Soil pH should be sitting at 6.3 or more, and phosphorus and potassium indexes need to be at least 2+.

Patterson recommends getting clover sown from mid-April and no later than mid-June so that seedlings are well established ahead of the first winter.

He said the CAFRE experience was that overseeding clover produced very variable results, whereas full reseeds proved to be “a belt and braces approach”.

The seed mixes that CAFRE used contained 2.5kg of medium leaf white clover split across two different varieties.

Overall, the project has been successful as clover has allowed CAFRE to cut back on fertiliser whilst not reducing total grass yields. “Grazing swards with white clover received just 68kg of nitrogen fertiliser last year. We were able to grow 34% more grass with 50% less nitrogen,” Patterson said.

There are 200 cattle finished on the Beef and Sheep Centre at CAFRE Greenmount each year across four different systems.

The farm is home to 118 spring calving suckler cows, with stabiliser-sired male progeny finished in a bull beef system at 14.6 months of age on average.

Male calves from the suckler herd at the Hill Farm Centre in Glenwherry are also finished at the Beef and Sheep Centre near Antrim.

These cattle are Angus, Limousin and Shorthorn crosses and are finished as steers from 20 months.

The third finishing system is heifers from both suckler herds which are not kept for replacements.

Again, the aim is to slaughter these cattle from 20 months of age.

Finally, Angus-sired cattle from Greenmount’s dairy herd are finished at the Beef and Sheep Centre at 24 months old.