Fodder has become a real issue on farms.

For those farmers who typically get stock out early, an 1 April turnout date was seen as the worst case scenario.

Now that worst case scenario has been realised.

Measuring

A quick recap on quantifying fodder supplies is crucial here. Use Table 1 to convert your bale stocks into days of feeding.

Stretching with concentrates

We can of course stretch grass silage with concentrate feeds. However, be wary that if we leave grass silage in front of animals at all times and offer concentrates, the reduction in silage intake can be small.

Teagasc research shows that every 1kg of concentrate fed at a low to moderate level (0-3kg in weanlings, 0-6kg in cows/stores) will reduce grass silage intake by 0.3 to 0.65kg. The replacement rate, or substitution rate, will be lower with poorer-quality silage (we save less silage) and higher with good-quality (>70% DMD) silage (we save more silage).

With this in mind, use Table 2 to work out how much silage you can take out of the diet for every kg of concentrates you offer and still maintain performance. It’s important to maintain 50% of the diet in the form of long fibre (such as grass silage or hay) to maintain proper digestive function.

Know that level of intake in your animals might not be as high as you think. For cows assume a dry matter intake of around 12kg – so at least 6kg of silage dry matter must be kept in, which equates to 20kg of fresh, 30% dry matter material.

For a 350kg weanling we must keep in 3.5kg of dry matter as forage, which equals 12kg of 30% dry matter silage. For a 500kg animal we must keep in 17kg of fresh weight (30% DM) silage.

What becomes clear quite quickly is the importance of knowing what’s in our clamp or bales, both from a physical (dry matter) and feeding value (DMD) point of view. It is not too late to send a sample for testing and many feed mills and co-ops now have access to instant infrared analysing machines.

Roughly, when estimating dry matter, assume that bales mowed and lifted on the same day will be 25% dry matter. A 24-hour wilt will produce 30% dry matter bales and a 48-hour wilt in hot weather will yield 40% dry matter bales.

Other options

Ground is saturated; no fertiliser is spread; no slurry is out – these are common utterances in farming conversations around the country this week. It’s easy to nod in agreement and accept these facts and many do so without having a complete idea of their own situation.

When I say complete, I don’t mean walking into the paddock beside the yard. Farms differ, fields differ. Walk your farm with a notebook and record grass covers (high, medium, low) in each field and the ground conditions (saturated, marginal, no give in sod).

Is there a chance you can get one pen of heifer calves or stores out to this field? Even if there is only a moderate grass cover, offering them concentrates will help to slow down the rate at which they graze and help with your herding. If the weather turns, offering them meals will also train them if they have to come back in quickly. Getting 20 weanlings out to grass will save half a bale every day – more if we offer concentrates.

Bedding

Straw has become a real issue but we must be careful not to skimp. Keeping a newborn calf’s environment clean will help to prevent scour outbreaks. Some are reporting that they simply have to try to stretch straw a bit and this is a dangerous game.

It might seem off topic, but now more than ever, colostrum intake is so important. For me, our job is 75% done getting the calf out safely. A newborn calf must be observed to be suckling in its first hours – one of the big bonuses of having cameras over calving pens is the ability to monitor this process.

Many will intervene with colostrum and a stomach tube where a calving was assisted as the stress can make a calf sluggish.

Going with 250g of soya bean meal to cows for the month prior to calving will help to improve the potency of colostrum as an immune system booster.

Navel treatment too, remains vital. Last year’s iodine won’t do and note that your solution should be 7-10% in concentration.

Gear your straw towards calving pens. If we have no straw alternatives like peat, miscanthus, woodchip or sawdust are fine, provided we adhere to the principles of bedding animals.

The bed must keep the animal dry, clean, comfortable and have the potential to be disposed of safely. Check a new bed material regularly and remember the knee test – you should be able to drop to your knees and rise with dry trousers. Offering a high-dry-matter diet (hay/concentrates) can help keep beds dry. Contact us with queries on bedding materials and we will try to help.

Creep

If cows and new calves are inside, set up a creep area in a feed passage, or even a slatted pen, and run cows on slats with calves creeping in and out.

Just because we don’t have a creep gate doesn’t mean that we cannot make a creep area.

I have seen some excellent improvised creep areas in which gates were jammed slightly open with planks of wood, just wide enough to let a calf through. In these creep areas your straw will stretch much further and we can even go without straw and use calf mats, provided they are cleaned every day.

Comment – Alan Dillon

There is a lot of stress on farm at the moment with forage scarce, ground conditions bad, lack of bedding and overcrowded sheds. What farmers don’t want to do is end up with no access to silage and no grass in a fortnight if weather doesn’t improve. Buying a fodder stretcher-type ration, while expensive, is at least guaranteeing thrive in growing stock and ensuring cows milk well. Poor-quality silage and hay at €30-40/bale will at best maintain stock at current weight and won’t maintain a milking cow.

The phase 2 BETTER farm participants dealt with a similar situation in 2013 and one of the biggest lessons learned was not to panic-sell stock. Those that did found they sold in a depressed market at poor weights.

Weather will improve at some stage and when it does grass growth and silage supply won’t be an issue as was the case in 2013.

The main lesson to be learned is to aim for the shortest winter possible but plan for the longest.