Showers here and there over the weekend may have halted mowers for parts of the country, but the opportunity for silage being cut in the next couple of days looks very promising.
The rest of the week looks to be dry, with sunny spells and high temperatures which may give many farmers the nudge they need to start cutting their first cut silage.
As we know, cutting dates have a serious impact on silage quality, with early to mid-May cutting often leading to a dry matter digestibility (DMD) of 75% or more, which is especially needed for when cows are milking with a silage diet.
Excellent quality silage is needed to avoid any unnecessary meal feeding and to maximise milk production, whether it be for liquid milk production or for the shoulders of the year in a spring calving system.
Silage quality
With making top quality silage, the first thing we think of is the savings that will be made on supplementation and concentrates input and not so much the impact on animal performance.
In a dairy system, the higher the DMD of the silage, the more forage the animal will intake, which will result in more milk solids produced, more milk from forage, and better rumen health.
From a beef perspective, when high DMD silage is fed to cattle, liveweight gains are improved, and it takes less time to finish an animal, which results in savings through slurry and shed space.
Where a cutting date is earlier in the season and high DMD forage is produced, animal performance levels can be optimised from lower levels of concentrate input.
Milk yield based on silage, according to Teagasc, is as follows:
| Concentrates (kg/cow/day) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Silage DMD | 0 | 4 | 8 | 12 |
| 79 | 23.6 | 29.1 | 32.8 | 32.0 |
| 75 | 27.1 | 29.3 | 28.8 | |
| 69 | 24.7 | 27.3 | 30.1 | |
What is evident from the table above is the amount of extra meal required to make up for the poorer quality silage, with an extra 4kg/meal /cow/day needed to produce the same amount of litres/cow when feeding 75% DMD compared to 79% DMD.
Farmers are often quite hesitant about cutting too early for fear of missing out on a bulky first cut of silage and concerns over having a lack of winter feed.
However, you are better off looking for that bulk over a couple of cuts as, according to Teagasc, by starting your first cut early, it results in a higher total yield over the two or three cuts and better quality.
When two cuts are taken, with the first cut in mid to late May, an extra 1t/ha of dry matter is produced, which equates to 4.5 bales/ha of silage when compared to a system where first cut is take on June 12.
This will be accompanied with higher quality forage, as the quality is far superior when it is cut earlier and, as we move from mid-May to mid-June, the grass plant enters its reproductive stage, beginning to grow stem and seed heads.
So, farmers should consider looking at bulking their reserves over a few cuts rather than just the first cut, as silage cut in early June will struggle to be over 65% DMD.
For farmers who have not grazed their silage ground prior to fertilsing and closing off, a mid-May cut is essential to ensure quality silage in front of the cows this winter.
