Christmas is generally the midpoint of the winter housing period, so no more than half of the silage on the farm should be consumed by then.

As was mentioned at a conference recently, a 10% silage deficit in December is a 100% silage deficit in March, so it's critically important to plan ahead and make plans if silage is going to be scarce.

Palm kernel

Palm kernel is costing around €170/t at the moment, which is good value if you are short of silage.

The thing is, it's much easier to feed this now when most of the cows are dry than to feed it next March when the workload is already very busy.

The other thing to keep in mind is that not all cows need to have feed in front of them all day.

Cows that are at target BCS for calving today, which is 3.25 BCS, only need a maintenance plus pregnancy diet from now until calving. Depending on silage quality, this is about 10kg DM of silage per day.

Feeding more than this will only make them fat and more likely to have metabolic problems after calving.

Three groups

It's good practice to split the dry cows up into three groups.

The main group should be cows on silage ad-lib.

One of the smaller groups will be cows that need a maintenance only or restricted silage diet.

The third group will be cows that require better-quality silage and/or some meal feeding.

A lot of silage can be saved by targeting at those that need it.

It's important to keep an eye on the progress through the silage pit.

Some farmers count how many grabs they are using per day, others measure progress through the pit by marking the distance used per week.