The Irish Farmers’ Association’s (IFA’s) grain committee provided sample “fodder stretching ration” examples to IFA’s national council on Tuesday of this week to encourage members to look to native grain and forage to feed their animals in the current drought.

The rations contained Irish barley, oats, wheat, beans and straw, along with yeast and imported molasses and soya hulls. Grain committee chairperson John Murphy said the examples he presented are “options that people can use to stretch fodder, while feeding native grains and making sure that their herds are fed to meet energy and nutritional requirements”.

He said they can be fed alongside Irish forage and encouraged people to look towards maize and whole crop silage as additions to animals’ diets. He added that there are still opportunities to harvest spring barley and spring wheat for whole crop.

Example

One example of a ration had 28% rolled barley, 27% rolled oats, 10% rolled wheat, 16% rolled beans, 8% barley straw and 5% imported soya and 6% cane mollasses.

The ration per kg has:

DM - 838.5g DM

ME - 10.4 MJ

Protein – 134g

NDF – 214g

Starch – 343g

Sugar – 47g

Oil (AH) – 20g