This year is the first time we have used ammonia straw for feeding the dry cows during the first half of winter. Last year, the silage quality was quite poor but was just right for feeding dry cows on and they wintered well. However, this year we have made really good-quality silage to feed to the youngstock and autumn cows. While this has reduced the overall feed bill this winter, this silage was much too good to feed to dry spring cows as they would have been far too fat come calving time. This is where the ammonia straw came in. We treated 110t of our own straw at harvest time and the dry cows were being fed this and some clean straw ad lib until mid-January.

The cows had come off grass in the back end in great order, I would say they were easily an average body condition score (BCS) of 3.75. This was literally them coming into the shed with money on their backs that we have used during the expensive winter period.

When the cows were put on ammonia straw initially they were very loose in the dung, much to our surprise. To combat this we actually had to feed a couple of bales of clean straw alongside the treated straw just to slow up passage rate slightly. For every four bales of treated straw we offered one bale of clean straw. It really has worked just perfectly. We have slowly bled the condition off the cows over the course of the winter and they are now sitting at an average BCS of about 2.75-3. This still leaves them in great condition for calving.

While the ammonia straw is good for controlling the BCS, it is not so good pre-calving and so in the middle of January, we moved the spring calvers on to a straw and silage TMR. This will help ensure good levels of colostrum at birth to give the calves the best start possible.

Not only was there a saving in feed costs, one of the greatest savings was on the labour side. The cows only had to be fed twice a week. Another benefit of it was seen in bedding, by feeding straw it meant drier manure and so less bedding was required.

Woodchip

The chip is another new thing for us this winter. It has worked well and the cattle have stayed very clean on it, with quite a low usage rate. The first muck out of it was last month and when we refilled the sheds, it took 18t of chip to bed down the 67 cattle. Barring any unforeseen circumstances, that will be enough to keep them until turnout. The spring calving cows were also bedded on chip until recently when they moved to straw for calving down on.

We only started keeping a count of how much chip we are using at the most recent mucking but would have put in a similar amount in the back end, meaning that we have used around half a tonne of chip per animal. At a cost of £85/t for the woodchip, bedding costs on chip this year would be around £46/animal. For comparison purposes, one of the old cattle courts takes around 6 bales of bedding straw per week and holds around 20 cows, meaning around 1.5t of straw/cow for the winter. If straw is worth around £85/t ex the farm, that is a saving for us of around £80/cow.

Plan for grazing

Although we are only in February just now, we are starting to look towards turnout and the 2018 grazing season. The cattle were housed in mid-October and when they came off the grass there was a good cover of around 1,900kg of dry matter/ha left behind them. This is more than we would have liked to have at closing but the weather was so poor in the back end that the cattle were going to do more damage trying to graze it than it was worth.

This grass has wintered fairly well and when ground conditions allow, I will turn the yearling heifers out on to it to clean off the over-wintered grass and give the fresh growth a chance to come up. We will also be going out with 40kg of nitrogen as soon as soil temperatures reach and maintain 5°C at 10cm. This will kick growth on without overdoing it, meaning that we should be able to get more cattle out early this year.

We are considering doing this with liquid fertiliser this year as we already use liquid for the first dose on the winter cereals and our local contractor is well set up for doing it. It will give more even application and means that we have one less job to do in the spring but at the same time, it has to be cost-effective. I am waiting for prices to come in before we make the final decision.

The heifers have not grown a great deal over winter as we are feeding them a relatively low-powered diet. They are eating a diet of pot ale, ammonia straw and silage costing around £1/day. This comes in around 30p/day less than last winter when we pushed them quite hard. However, when they went to grass last spring, they didn’t perform as well as we would have hoped for. By growing them slower during the winter, it saves on winter feed costs and they will then be ready to kick on once they get out to spring grass at about half the feed cost.

While we are growing them slowly, they are still all over 400kg now, meaning that lifetime gains are at least 1kg a day. They will be more than fit for the bull come June to calve down at 24 months.

Bulls

Last year’s spring born bulls are also doing well, with weight gains of around 1.5kg/day. They are coming up on 12 months old and we plan to send them off in the next month or so. They are being fed on an ad-lib ration through a hopper. They too are on chip and are looking really well. The only hiccup with them is that they are in one of the calving pens, so we are doing some alterations to an old cart shed to give us more pen space. It is away from the rest of the sheds and will be used firstly to get these bulls moved out of the calving pen but longer term it will serve as an isolation pen.

It is quite a cost-effective project as all we are doing is digging out post holes in the floor which will be concreted back in once the posts are installed. We will hang crash barriers on the posts and feed rail along the front, meaning it has all been done for a couple of hundred pounds.

We will then be ready (as can be) for the onset of calving.