Cull cows: In some parts of the country, prices for cull and empty cows seem to be back a lot in the marts, scarcely making their weight in euro terms. Does it pay to hang on to them a bit longer? It depends on a number of factors.

Firstly, the logic behind selling culls and empty cows early is to reduce grass demand, which means less supplement needs to be fed. If a decision has been made to sell these cows, but you are not happy with the price, then the alternative is to dry them off and put them on silage. This requires silage and housing. At 15c/kg DM, the silage alone will cost €1.80/day. This does not include the cost of feeding it, the opportunity cost of the cow space, the cost of spreading the slurry nor does it include the cost of feeding any meal. While prices are traditionally stronger in spring, do your sums carefully and for dairy farmers tight on forage, labour and housing, move them on now. Specialist finishers have economies of scale and the benefit of better input prices.

Feeding meals: With almost one third of dairy farmers applying for the milk reduction scheme, feeding extra meal to produce extra milk will not be a priority for them. Of course, those who have applied for the scheme are under no obligation to fulfil all the commitments, but remember that the payment per litre not supplied is reduced if you don’t cut back by as much as you said you would. That said, some farmers are asking about the economics of meal feeding this autumn.

The economics all come down to the price of both meal and milk and the responses to this meal. The response to meal depends on genetics.

The national average cows in the Next Generation Herd study respond to 1kg of meal by producing 0.95kg milk on average over the year.

The higher EBI animals have a lower response, but given their higher milk solids, on a kilo of milk solids basis the response is more or less the same. So with meal costing around €250/t and average milk price received in the region of 25c/l, then the meal is costing slightly more than the value of the milk. If very short in grass, you get a much better response up to about 4kg per cow per day. If you have enough grass, then you get a much lower response because all you do is replace more expensive meal with grass.

Silage stocks: At this stage, everyone should do an assessment of the amount of feed available on the farm. As a rule of thumb, to calculate the amount of silage in a pit, measure the length x breadth x settled height in metres and divide by 1.35 to get tonnes equivalent. Then multiply by the dry matter to get the tonnes dry matter.

A round bale of silage will have between 200kg and 300kg of silage dry matter, depending on how well packed it was and how dry the grass was at baling.

A dry dairy cow will need about 330kg dry matter per month, while a weanling heifer will need about 150kg of dry matter per month.