1st Cut Silage Quality

You wouldn’t be blamed for not wanting to re-live this year’s spring, with the Met Office recording its sixth-wettest period during March, April and May at 32% more rainfall than average.  The preceding winter wasn’t any better, and this combined with the lack of sunshine this spring has led to bumper crops of low quality 1st cut silage. 

Typically, we are seeing that both ME and protein are very disappointing on 1st cut samples analysed so far.  This is partly due to late harvesting, but the low proteins are a result of the wet winter and the grass not getting its roots down to find the nitrogen.  Early fertiliser and slurry applications were missed due to the weather on a lot of farms which has also contributed to the lower proteins. 

On average, 1st cut ME this year is 10.5, against 11.07 last year.  If a cow ate 22 kg of last year’s silage, then with the higher fibre and lower energy in this year’s silage, she would only eat 20 kg of this year’s silage, giving a reduction in ME of 13 MJ (double whammy – lower energy and she will eat less of it). That reduction in energy would reduce milk yield by 2.6 litres of milk.  To replace this lost energy with a 12.9 ME concentrate at £280 per tonne would need 1.2 kg costing 33p/cow/day.  For a herd of 200 cows, that equates to £66 per day in extra feed cost to maintain yield.

The good news is later cuts should be much better quality which will help the overall picture, but careful planning is going to be required for this year to maintain yields at a sensible feed cost.