The wholecrop cereal silage season has already kicked off in some places. Wholecrop silage has been around for a number of decades but was really popular last year as farmers were looking to replenish silage stocks.

The best crops for wholecrop are high-yielding fields of wheat and barley. Many winter barley crops are now at the ideal stage for wholecrop being between 40% and 50% dry matter with the grains at the soft cheddar stage.

Cutting the crop at this stage means an additive or a corn cracker in the harvester won’t be required.

Later-maturing crops tend to have higher starch contents

Cutting higher dry matter crops later in the season is also possible but if the grains are hard (less than 25% moisture content), then a corn cracker will be needed to crack the grains and an additive may be required to aid preservation in very dry crops.

Later-maturing crops tend to have higher starch contents. Crops should be valued based on the grain yield, as this is where the majority of the feed value is.

Feeding value

Leaving a high stubble will increase the feeding value as the proportion of grain to stem will increase, but overall crop yields will decrease.

A 4t/acre crop of winter wheat, harvested as wholecrop will yield about 5.8t/acre dry matter.

There will be between 10% and 15% losses at harvest time.

In terms of valuing a crop, the best policy is to estimate the grain yield per acre (a tillage adviser can do this for you) and multiply this by the expected grain price.

Then you need to value the straw on the ground, usually around €150/ac. If the grain yields 4t/ac at €170/t, the total value per acre is €830 less the cost of combining which is usually around €55/ac. Therefore, the tillage farmer would need to get around €775/ac. At a dry matter yield of 5.1t/ac in the pit, this works out at 15c/kg dry matter.