High quality silage delivers big dividends

Farmers can save thousands per annum in feed costs by taking steps to improve the quality of their silage crop, writes Gordon Peppard

THE benefits and savings that can be made from producing high quality silage were outlined at the recent Teagasc Green Acres Calf to Beef farm walk on Michael Ryan’s farm in Ballymore, Co Westmeath.

David Webster, business and technology beef adviser in Mullingar, Co Westmeath pointed out that prior to partaking in the Teagasc Green Acres calf to beef programme, Michael’s typical silage analysis results ranged from 64–67pc Dry Matter Digestibility (DMD) with 10.5–12pc protein.

Since making significant changes to how he managed his silage crop, Michael has substantially increased the quality of silage produced on his farm.

Analysis this year shows silage ranging from 68–74pc DMD with 11–13.6pc Protein. These improvements didn’t happen by chance, but by making a few key adjustments.

Spring grazing

Traditionally Michael would not have turned out animals until later in the spring and very often silage fields were not grazed off prior to closing up for silage. Fields that were grazed off, may not have been grazed out as tight as down to four centimetres which would be required.

Now Michael has a plan where all silage fields are grazed out tight (4cm) in the spring.

Weather permitting, animals are turned out earlier in February. Having grazed approximately one third of the grazing ground, there is still time to graze out the silage ground before closing up.

Closing date

Prior to joining the programme, silage ground was generally closed from mid to the end of April each year. This year a specific plan was put in place to have silage ground grazed by the March 25, slurry applied and fertiliser completed before April 1.

Fertiliser

Blanket spreading of one and a half bags of a compound fertiliser was common practise in years gone passed, with in adequate levels applied to support a healthy silage crop. Now the plan is to get 2,500-3,000 gallons of slurry per acre out at the end of March, followed by four bags of 18/6/12, five to seven days later. As the soil indices are low this gives the crop a chance to match nutrients removed from a good cut of silage.

Weed control

Docks predominately and other weed species are huge contrib- utors to reducing the quality of the sward. Until recently, grassland spraying was carried out sporadically, but now Michael targets controlling weeds in his silage fields.

Cutting date

The target cutting date is now May 20, approximately seven weeks from closing. The aim is to cut before the crop has started to shoot out and go to seed thereby creating more stemmy grass in the pit.

Having fertilised the crop well, there should be a good yield at this stage. Previously with the low fertiliser levels crops were left longer to bulk up at the detriment to quality.

Wilting

The aim is to have silage around 25pc dry matter, depending on weather, 18–24 hours of a wilt is generally sufficient to achieve this. Michael used to leave the crop down for 48 or more hours before, this lead to a high dry matter silage which is much more difficult to preserve and manage at the pit face when feeding out.

Unless you have a very narrow pit face and are moving across the full width of the pit daily, high dry matter silage can go off quickly leaving poorer quality feeding value. Meanwhile, the farm walk also