With all cattle housed on Tullamore Farm, silage reserves have been assessed and diets are being lined up for the winter. This year, like most farms in the country, there is no shortage of winter fodder in the yard.

Fodder budget

Farm manager Shaun Diver carried out a quick fodder budget using the Irish Farmers Journal fodder calculator, which can be found under the calculators tab on the left side at www.farmersjournal.ie/toolbox.

The result shows that there were 960t of silage in the yard at the start of the winter. This comprises 500t of first-cut, 370t of second-cut and just over 100 round bales, which equates to 90t of silage.

You can manually calculate the amount of silage in your pit by measuring the length, breadth and average height in metres and dividing by 1.35. This will give you an estimate of the tonnes of silage on a fresh weight basis. Where baled silage is being used, multiply the number of bales in the yard by 0.9 to convert to tonnes of silage.

From here, you need to calculate what your silage requirement is for the winter. Again, using the fodder calculator online, Shaun has estimated that we will require a little over 670t, meaning we have a surplus of nearly 300t of silage in the yard. Depending on weather in spring, we may use more of this and it is reassuring to have a buffer of quality feed built up on the farm.

This excess silage is due to a good grass-growing season on the farm, which saw extra baled silage being made in order to maintain grazing quality. This has also been achieved using 8t less bagged nitrogen than previous years. It can also be put down to swards starting to reach their potential, since soil fertility issues have been addressed, and more clover being present in the swards in the latter half of the grazing season.

Table 1 outlines how to manually calculate silage demand for the winter on your farm.

Fill out every line for each stock class and add up the total required on the right-hand column. This table assumes no meal feeding is taking place. Obviously where meal feeding is taking place to young or growing stock, this will reduce the overall tonnage of silage needed – the online fodder calculator can allow for this.

Silage quality

Knowing the quality of the feed in the yard is just as important as knowing how much feed you have. Both pits have been analysed (Table 2) with second-cut silage having a higher dry matter digestibility (DMD) figure than the first cut. This could be due to the first cut being just at the end of the long dry period throughout April and May.

The grass was under a lot of stress at this point due to the lack of moisture which caused it to put up a seed head earlier than it may have done otherwise. Having more seed head emergence means the crop has more fibre and less sugar, resulting in a lower DMD figure.

Cow diet

Currently, the 76 cows are on second-cut silage ad-lib. The cows look to be in excellent condition on the whole and this silage has even increased condition in some cows since weaning a few weeks ago.

Shaun likes to have cows in good condition at this time of the year as he feels that cows lose some of their intake ability coming up to calving and then it is harder to keep condition on them. This is due to the rapidly growing calf in late pregnancy taking up more space in the cow, restricting the amount of silage that she can eat.

While we do not want cows over-conditioned at calving, the target body condition score (BCS) is 2.5 (scale from one to five), Shaun really doesn’t want thin cows at calving either. Thin cows can also have difficulties at calving due to not being fit enough to calve.

They will struggle to produce enough milk to rear a calf and they will more than likely fail to go back in calf within the desired timeframe for the following year.

The cows are averaging a BCS of 3.25. By calving, this will be around 2.75, with cows losing half a condition score between now and calving.

Cull cows and fattening heifers

There are currently nine cull cows and three heifers being finished. They are on ad-lib second-cut silage and 6.5kg of a 12% finishing ration (34.5% rolled barley, 35% ground maize, 15% beet pulp, 7% soya bean meal, 5% molasses and vitamins and minerals). These cattle will all be slaughtered this side of Christmas.

Weanling heifers

The heifers will be getting baled silage most of the winter, as they are housed away from the main yard. Alongside this, they will be fed around 1.5kg/day of a 16% crude protein ration. The aim for these heifers is to grow at around 0.65kg/day over the winter.

The ration comprises 36% rolled barley, 18% beet pulp, 14% flaked maize, 14% maize distillers, 10% soya bean meal and 6% molasses. We are currently paying €160/t delivered for this mix.

Bulls

The bull weanlings are on second-cut silage ad-lib alongside 3kg/day of the same 16% ration as outlined above. This will be stepped up to 5kg before the end of December and from mid-January onwards, they will build up to ad-lib meal feeding.

Last year, once the bulls went to ad-lib meal, a 12% crude protein finishing ration was used. However, this year the plan is to feed a 14% ration, as we feel the young growing bull will benefit from a higher protein diet, as it is still growing for much of the finishing phase.

This will be the fourth year the farm will finish young bulls and the decision has been made to move away from bull beef production with the 2021-born male calves.

Sheep

The ewes will be held out at grass until mid-January. Shaun is keen to get them in at that stage as it was slightly later this spring and he felt that they lost a little bit too much condition in the last weeks at grass, even though they were being offered silage outside. We have budgeted for 240 ewes indoors for an average of 12 weeks, which gives us a silage requirement of around 25t once meal supplementation is taken into account.