Forage Crops

With heavy frost and snow forecast for parts of the country into the weekend, vigilance is needed around feeding forage crops. It is not recommended to feed these frozen crops as sudden deaths can occur from feeding. The best advice is to wait until frost or snow has thawed. Changing the time you move the fence until the afternoon can help in some situations. Try to wait until the sun has thawed the crop in the afternoon to move the fence. If the crop doesn’t thaw out, feed extra silage to get you over the frosty period. Make sure drinkers are flowing and not frozen. If meal is being fed, reducing meal feeding will help to reduce water requirements until water starts flowing again.

Indoors

Pay particular attention to animals on ad-lib meals to make sure they have an adequate water supply. If these animals don’t have access to clean, fresh water on a daily basis, meal intakes will drop and it could lead to digestive upsets. Fill some IBC tanks or other water storage tanks, just in case a big freeze comes.

Slurry Values

We got our slurry analysed last week on Tullamore Farm. We took samples from two sheds, one from a dry cow shed where cows are being fed an ad-lib silage diet and the other a shed where animals were on a finishing diet of meal and silage. The samples were sent to the UK for analysis and results were back in two weeks. We took the samples when tanks were being agitated to get a representative sample. Not surprisingly, the shed where the animals were being fed a concentrate and silage diet had the higher nutrient value. When you calculate the amount of money that’s in a slurry tank, it is a valuable resource and should be used to get the maximum benefit out of it. P and K are the most expensive parts of artificial fertilisers and most farmers have an abundant supply of P and K in slatted tanks. The nutrient vale of this slurry can be taken off crop requirements for silage or grazing later in the year. This will allow you to reduce your spend on artificial fertilisers.

Mart Events

The Irish Farmers Journal livestock team will host seven mart events in association with AXA Smart Insurance in February. The first event kicks off in Carrigallen Mart, Co Leitrim, on 12 February at 7pm. “Achieving targets with healthy animals this spring” is the theme of the events and topics such as calving, calf health, pneumonia and scour will be discussed, including a live display of cows and calves. The events are approved for the Department of Agriculture Knowledge Transfer programme. Admission is free and everybody is welcome.