Time to assess winter feed stocks

By Keith Fahy

Drystock Advisor Teagasc Athenry

As part of my role working as a drystock advisor with Teagasc, a key part of our work is to help farmers in terms of grant applications, nutrient management advice, succession, breeding advice and so on. However, this year completing a fodder budget could be one of the most important tasks any farmer should undertake.

While farming is quite cyclical and repetitive from year to year it often encounters curve balls from time to time. In the last number of years, agriculture, like many other sectors, has had to face many challenges and extremities that had not been forecast.

Since 2020 alone we have had to deal with the Covid pandemic, wars, political change, environmental and regulatory restrictions, increased input costs, volatile commodity prices, labour shortages and now, to add to this list, is climate change and drought.

2026 will be a year remembered by many farmers across the country. Lack of rain, reduced grass growth, feeding silage reserves during summer, increased meal bills, and extra workload are some of the many challenges farmers have faced, especially throughout July and August. This can be extremely challenging for farmers in every way whether that be physically, financially, and more importantly psychologically.

If any farmers are struggling it is always important to talk, whether that be to family, neighbours, agricultural advisors or indeed to seek professional help from a GP or counsellor. Help is always available and there is always a solution. Winter stocks may be low on farms but there are many ways to try and reduce and ease pressure on farm.

Completing a fodder budget is quite straight forward and can be done by entering your animal details into the table. Please see the table here which can be used to write in the number of animals and predicted months feeding.

Meal feeding, buffer feeding, roughage sources and extended grazing, where possible, will all also help to reduce winter feed demand.

As a rough rule of thumb, we would say that farmers would need three bales per weanling, four to five bales for stores and five to six bales for suckler cows per winter. Obviously, this is a rule of thumb and will depend on the length of winter, live weight of animals, quality of forage, level of wastage and amount of meal being fed.

If a 300kg weanling eats two per cent of their live weight in dry matter per day. This 6kg of dry matter could be broken down into 4.5kg of dry matter of silage and 1.5kg of meal.

Assuming there is 180kg of dry matter in a bale of silage and assuming no waste, a bale would feed this animal for 40 days, when supplemented with meal feeding at 1.5kg per day.

Feed sales rising

I spoke to a feed salesman recently and he informed me that some feed mills are going round the clock to try and keep orders filled. He also said that sales are up on the drought of 2018. While this might benefit the feed sales sector, it will indirectly hammer feed costs on farm and put pressure on farm profitability.

Farmers and contractors have seen colossal hikes in fuel and fertiliser prices recently, and this is certainly not helping the situation. So, for all these reasons, it is essential that farmers take an hour and count the bales of silage/hay/straw in stock and measure their silage pits, to assess the volumes of feed that may be at hand for winter.

As always, and farmers are aware of this, assessing passenger cattle and considering the sale of animals that are not performing or that are not leaving a margin is important now.

Scanning cows and selling empty cows is always some help in trying to reduce demand at grass and reducing the amount of feed required for winter.

Grass growth rates

Grass growth rates are extremely variable throughout Ireland. This can be seen when we look at the Teagasc grass growth prediction tool completed by Elodie Ruelle in Teagasc Moorepark.

There is a significant difference in predicted growth rates when looking throughout the country. Notable figures that stick out would be grass growth highs of 70’s and 80’s kgDM/HA along the West coast, when compared to some lows of 6-7kgDM/Ha per day along the other side of the country, the East coast.

To put this into basic terms, some farms will grow 10 times more grass than others. Grass, as always, is our cheapest and most profitable feed and so it is essential that we utilise this as best we can.

As the chemical fertiliser application rate deadline is nearing with the 14th of September being the last day for spreading chemical nitrogen and phosphorous, farmers should try and ensure that they grow as much grass as possible into the autumn.

According to Elodie Ruelle from Moorepark: “Soil moisture deficit is still limiting or stopping growth across the country, with the exception of the West and Northwest. With the possible return of rain, grass growth should start to recover.

"Where swards have already greened up, recovery should be relatively quick once sufficient moisture returns. However, where grass remains yellow or stressed, recovery will take longer, as the sward will need to green up before growth rates begin to increase.”

So, this week complete a fodder budget as this will aid in making important decisions in the immediate future to reduce long term pressures.