Feed

At a Glanbia fodder meeting last week, it was said that there is a 2.5:1 return on investment from feeding meal when grass is scarce.

So for every €1 spent on meal you’ll get €2.50 back in extra milk.

Considering grass has been scarce since mid-June, more meal than ever was fed and Glanbia milk intake was still back 2% in July, it’s hard to know where the return on the meal went – definitely not into the farmer’s pocket.

Many farmers are feeding meal now to build up grass for the autumn.

Others are expecting the price of meal to increase over the winter, so they reckon it is better to buy the supplement to grow the grass now, rather than feed meal in winter when it is more expensive and more difficult to feed.

Whatever the strategy, you need to get a return from the meal and to do this you must reduce the amount of grass the cows are eating.

If you don’t, they’ll just eat more overall and either produce more milk or put it on their back. It’s never a case that by feeding 1kg DM of meal, cows will automatically eat 1kg DM less of grass.

Substitution

The substitution rate in autumn is about 0.3kg. So for every 1kg DM of meal fed, cows will eat 0.3kg DM less of grass.

If the objective is to build grass from feeding meal, then it’s only about 30% effective unless grass is restricted.

The same applies when feeding silage next winter, so keep this in mind when planning how to feed cows.

It has to be a case of restricting grass and silage between now and the end of March next year – feed is too valuable to waste.

The best way to do this is to use strip wires and allocate grass on a 12- or 24-hour basis.

Count the number of cows, decide how much they eat in total, deduct the amount of meal being fed and then allocate the rest in a 12- or 24-hour section of grass.

For example, if the cover of grass is 1,000kg/ha, there are 100 580kg cows being fed 3kg of meal the area to be given is 1.5ha every 24 hours (18 – 3 = 15 x 100 = 1,500 divided by 1,000 = 1.5ha). Then adjust daily depending on residuals.

Calves

Believe it or not, there is only about five months before calving will start again on most farms.

Last spring was difficult because cows and calves were in sheds for longer and there was more pressure across the board.

What can we do now to make life easier next spring? On a typical 100-cow herd calving 90% in six weeks and selling bull calves at two weeks of age, there will be 65 calf spaces needed at peak, six weeks into calving.

Some of the older calves could go to grass at this stage (mid-March), but what if the weather is bad and how will you feed them?

What happens if the farm gets locked up and calves can’t be sold? All of these things are possibilities and now is the time to prepare for them by putting contingency plans in place.

Coming up with an easy way to feed calves can save hours of work per day which makes a huge difference when the day is busy anyway.