Late spring ups demand for bedding and fodder
With all indicators pointing towards a late spring and the recent snowy spell doing little to help matters, the consequent delay in grass growth and cattle turnout couldn’t have come in a worse year.
Advising Scottish farmers to take act now and draw up a plan for their fodder and bedding usage – and address issues at an early stage – SRUC stalwart Basil Lowman said that for many producers an additional few weeks enforced housing of animals could cause real problems.
The beef adviser with SAC Consulting was speaking out after data from the college’s grass variety trials predicted that T-sum 200 – which indicates when soils have warmed sufficiently for grass growth to begin – was likely to be two-tothree weeks later than normal this year.
“A late spring couldn’t be at a worse time,” said Lowman. “Not only are many farms already short of forage due to last summer’s wet weather, which forced many stock to be housed much earlier than normal, but potentially as problematic
0 A late spring could threaten straw for animal bedding is a severe shortage of straw to bed stock.”
He said that as well as forage shortages, which could affect an animal’s ability to produce sufficient milk, a lack of bedding also offered a real threat to newborn animals.
“Many farmers with suckler herds, block calving dairy herds and housed flocks time calving and lambing so that stock can be immediately turned out on to clean, high-quality spring grass,” he daid.
“Being forced to keep animals indoors could pose a major additional disease challenge for newborn animals this spring. With a real risk of a late spring, it is best to plan now and minimise problems later.”
Listing some immediate steps which livestock farmers could take to combat the late spring, Lowman included selling stock earlier to lighten the load – even if this meant putting them away store rather than finished.
He also advised prioritising bedding towards youngstock, especially newborns, through the provision of a well-bedded creep for new calves
Lowman also suggested that keepers should focus on grazing all their grass and delay shutting fields up for silage until later – and even advised producers to consider grazing forward winter sown cereal crops with ewes and lambs.