The Grass Week: don’t plan for silage in October to stretch grazing season

If silage needs to be fed to extend the grazing season, it should be fed now rather than planning to feed it in October.

It’s important, as this is to build covers or stretch out your grazing season and if silage is fed in October as ground conditions won’t allow full-time grazing, then this is fine.

So looking at farmers' grass budgets for the rest of the grazing season, I have found that the majority of farms have set up a plan where they will graze with minimum supplement until October, at which stage they are planning to go in with some silage for the month of October to slow cows down and stretch the grazing season.

Problem

So where’s the problem? Well, on paper this works and you will have a plan which will hopefully get you to your target closing cover.

However, when you enter October, you will be on your last grazing rotation, so how you graze out field sets up grass quality for the coming year.

Achieving good graze-outs is one of your main focuses during this time.

Once silage is in the diet, graze-outs will suffer. Cows will be full going to pasture or get lazy and gather at gaps looking to come back in for silage instead of grazing down the paddocks fully.

Major focus

The next major focus on farms in October is getting 70% of the grazing block grazed before 1 November.

This is essential on farms that have early turn-out and a compact calving pattern to ensure a good grass supply in the spring.

Feeding silage will slow down cows and delay farmers from achieving this target.

So when should you feed silage? Well if it’s needed, it should be fed this month for a week or two to help build grass.

Otherwise, once 70% of the grazing platform is grazed and closed for the spring, introducing silage to stretch out the last 30% is certainly an option and will help keep production up.

If grazing conditions are unfavourable at any stage, the plan may change and silage may have to go in.

We can’t control the weather, but it’s important we put a plan in place that helps to ensure we will have sufficient grass quality and quantity next spring.

In short