Meeting autumn grass targets - Teagasc advice for Kilkenny farms

Reviewing the feed situation:
Although the rainfall over the previous week has ended the drought conditions on many farms in the region and should result in higher growth rates over the next few weeks, farmers now need to access both how much grass cover and winter feed they will be going into this winter with.

Meeting Autumn Grass Targets:
Because of the low grass covers on farms at present many will struggle to reach the recommended targets (Average Farm Cover 1000kgs+ by 1st October @ stocking rates > 2.5 LU/Ha with a closing cover >600kgs/Ha) Reaching 70-80% of these targets might be the best that most will be able to achieve. However as closing farm cover is such an important factor in how much grass is present in the Spring we need to get as close to our closing targets as we can.

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What can we do to achieve this: Higher amounts of feed than usual in the form of meal and/or silage will probably need to continue to be supplemented, maybe to the end of the grazing season. Farms, if not already, need to be set up on at least a 30 day rotation. Other options to reduce demand might include selling surplus animals, drying off low yielders, housing some stock and spreading watery slurry sooner rather than later to boost growth.

Winter Feed Stocks:
On many farms some silage made for the coming winter has been fed to stock recently and/or silage fields were grazed off resulting in a depletion of winter feed available on these farms which could be further exacerbated over the coming weeks. As such winter feed budgets need to be re accessed now to identify if a deficit is present and what action needs to be taken.

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Possible remedies:
If short of winter feed one option would be to purchase fodder supplies such as silage, hay, maize or straw. Price and availability will dictate what to purchase with straw if it can be fed easily to stock looking good value at the moment. Straights such as soya hulls at present could be another option.

Another remedy could be to reduce the amount of stock to be fed over the winter. Obviously the more stock sold the smaller the amount of winter feed required but also the quicker these animals are moved the less demand there is on feed stocks. Teagasc figures show that by selling cull cows before the end of September it can save nearly three tonnes of silage over the winter for every cull sold compared to selling that cull later in December where the saving would be only half that.
The key message is that both grass and winter feed supplies need to be looked at now to see if action is required to correct any shortages that could occur in the winter months and into the following year.

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