Feed budgeting is a very important tool in the armoury in a season like this. In years of plenty, we have little need for a budget as the surplus is always carried forward, with many quoting phrases such as “feed in the yard is like money in the bank”.

However, as we have come from a winter where the feed bank has seen some major withdrawals, into a summer of poor growth, we need to start looking at what is required for a normal winter, where we are at now and is there a shortfall?

By identifying any shortfall now, we give ourselves a decent opportunity to fill the gap at more cost-effective levels than discovering in January that we only have a week of silage left to feed and grass is 10 weeks away.

The first part of feed budgeting is to count up how many animals that you will have on the farm for winter and for how many days they will need to be fed. We cannot predict whether it will be an early or late turnout, so we work from the point of view of an average season. Taking the Websters and the Duguids as examples, the stock that they will be carrying this winter are in Table 1 and 2.

As can be seen from Table 1 and 2, we are budgeting to have enough feed to get the farms to a normal housing date on both farms. We can also see that both farms have somewhere around a 180 to 200 day winter. I have also multiplied the number of days by the number of animals to give an idea of how many feeds are required for each group over the period to give a better idea of the amount of feed required.

For example, if we look at the spring weaned calves at Cranna, we can see that they will require around 14,000 feeds to see them through winter. Therefore, for every 1kg of barley that they will eat, the Duguids will need 14t of barley to get them to the spring sales.

In the case of both farms, the silage needed for winter is less than stated in the table. Last week, we discussed how the Websters have established forage for the ewes pre-lambing. Having run through the current feed requirements of the herd this week, they will be establishing a further area of hybrid brassica behind spring barley as soon as harvest is off.

The intention is for this to carry the dry cows from weaning up until Christmas.

This should mean that the dry cows will be outside for a further 40-50 days. While on the brassica, they will need around 10kg of silage per head per day, leading to a reduction of between 25-30t of silage required. Alongside this, they will be a saving in bedding straw, further reducing wintering costs.

Straw and high-protein syrup diet

Last year, the Duguids had great success with a straw and high-protein syrup diet for the dry cows. While many would argue that a straw diet will be too expensive this year, last year saw the cows on this diet use less straw overall than the cows that were on the straw-silage diet, due to drier bedding. It was already planned to put more cows on to it this year and weaning is planned to ensure that the cows come in to the house with a good level of condition on their backs.

Not all of the dry cows will be on this, however it is hoped that two thirds of them will be. They will be on this up until six weeks pre-calving. This should lead to a reduction in the overall silage requirement of around 120t.

The second step in feed budgeting is to establish just how much feed is in the yard just now. For those with silage pits, we need to measure the length, width and average depth of the pit to give us the number of cubic metres of silage in the pit. We also need to take account of how many bales of silage and hay there are. We then need to look at how much grass there is still to cut and estimate a realistic yield from it to give us an idea as to our current position.

To calculate the silage available, we use Table 3. In the case of both farms, it is too early to sample the silage yet. However, with the season being as dry as it is, we will estimate the silage to be 35% dry matter.

For the Websters, their silage pit is 15m long by 10m wide and the current average height of grass in the pit is 2.5m. This gives us 375m3 of silage. At a density of 0.22t/m3, this gives us 82.5t of dry matter (DM) in the pit. At 35% DM, we have a stock of 240t in the pit. Coupling this with 70 bales of red clover silage, we have a grand total of 290t in the yard just now.

Looking at the cattle demand of 530t of silage, this gives us a shortfall of 190t. As mentioned last week, 24ha have been set up for a second cut and hopefully this will cover the shortfall.

For the Duguids, their silage pits are 42×6×3.5 and 40×4×2.5. This gives us 1,282m3. At 35% DM, we have a stock of 805t of pit silage. Coupling this with the 75 bales of silage taken from the paddock grazing earlier in the season, this gives us 855t of silage in the yard.

Taking a cattle demand of around 1,150t, this means a current shortfall of 295t. The later cuts should cover much of this and if required, more cattle will go on to a straw diet. They are also establishing more forage crops once the weather breaks to stretch the winter reserve.

The other avenue that will be explored across the farms will be to remove animals that are empty or are not to see the bull again as quickly as possible, further reducing feed demand.

Taking action early like this gives our farmers a chance to ride out what has turned out to be quite a challenging season and it is far easier to make plans from a position of knowledge than it is to firefight later in the season, once many potential options have passed by.