A number of farmers have said to me that they are going to continue to feed higher than normal levels of meal over the next few weeks in order to build up silage stocks.

Part of the reasoning is that meal is plentiful now and at a reasonable cost, whereas some people say that it is going to increase in price next winter and it may be harder to get, as demand for feed is going to be high across Europe.

It is inevitable that meal will have to be fed during the dry period

The main issue is that most farmers are short on winter silage. A 10% to 15% deficit may be made up before the grass growing year ends by cutting surplus grass as silage.

But, in larger deficits, it is inevitable that meal will have to be fed during the dry period.

Restricted

The key thing to remember is that when feeding meal to stretch grass or silage, the amount of grass or silage fed will have to be restricted.

This means that strip wires must be used to allocate grass to cows. By not allocating grass and restricting intakes, the extra meal will have no effect on reducing forage intake.

What will happen is that overall intake will increase and cows will milk more and put on more body condition score.

A typical cow will eat 17kg to 19kg of grass dry matter per day. For every kilo of meal fed, the amount of grass being allocated should reduce by a little less than 1kg DM.

Residual heights

Post-grazing residual heights will tell if you are over- or under-allocating grass. Ideally, these heights should be 3.5cm to 4cm. If it is much higher or lower than this, then too much or too little grass is being allocated.

Grass dry matters remain higher than normal at 20% to 22% dry matter, so even small quantities of grass actually have a lot of feed in them.

Grass growth rates are very variable currently and are all dependent on how much rain has fallen. Parts of Limerick, Tipperary, Kilkenny and Carlow are still in need of rain, as these areas have gotten less rain than the rest of Ireland.