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Feeding Dairy cows

  • 17-09-2012 11:05pm
    #1
    FishhookKY
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 16 ✭


    Just wondering about the winter a head and the best and cheapest way to feed a spring calving heard. Short on silage and poor in quality, Teagasc are saying straw and meal our co-op is supposed to bring out a winter feed for around €275 @ around 15% pr and energy around the same as Dairy ration. Hoping to have them out until end of Oct. I


Comments

  • #2
    freedominacup
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,920 ✭✭✭freedominacup


    I'd go for a 3:1 mix of rolled oats and rapeseed giving you around 14% protein. 3kgs of this plus 1kg of straw would give you atound 50% of a dry cows requirements and replace probably 60% of her silage requirements.

    Oats is an excellent feed for dry cows not as inclined to put too much weight on the calf for some reason. There should be quite a bit of feed oats around this year. The quality probably isn't as good as other years but that's true of all cereals this year.


  • #3
    DMAXMAN
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 328 ✭✭DMAXMAN


    freedominacup wrote: »
    I'd go for a 3:1 mix of rolled oats and rapeseed giving you around 14% protein. 3kgs of this plus 1kg of straw would give you atound 50% of a dry cows requirements and replace probably 60% of her silage requirements.

    Oats is an excellent feed for dry cows not as inclined to put too much weight on the calf for some reason. There should be quite a bit of feed oats around this year. The quality probably isn't as good as other years but that's true of all cereals this year.
    just to say about the quality of grain this year ,unless its real crap it doesn`t really affect performance of ruminant animals and there is some research that shows that pigs/poultry are not as badly affected by low bushel grain as you would be led to believe


  • #4
    freedominacup
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,920 ✭✭✭freedominacup


    DMAXMAN wrote: »
    just to say about the quality of grain this year ,unless its real crap it doesn`t really affect performance of ruminant animals and there is some research that shows that pigs/poultry are not as badly affected by low bushel grain as you would be led to believe

    I'm not trying to be argumentative or smart-assed here but what do you define as real crap? I know that when we first got a diet feeder we were conned into buying some wheat with a low bushel weight early 60's I think the bushel was. We could not get the cows to perform on it and we've always been careful since about quality.

    I have a neighbour who grows and buys around 1500 tonnes of wheat and barley annually. He generally buys green grain has the facilities for drying and cleaning etc. He also dries grain for a few locals as well. He told me a few years ago in another bad harvest that you could send him in a load of wet s**t, low bushel, dirty sample etc and he'd give you back a clean load with a reasonable bushel obviously a bit lighter once it had been tidied up. Problem is it would still be s**t. The bushel would be fine the sample would look good but he is of the opinion that if the quality is wrong going in then it can't be there coming out. I suppose the thing be considered with the neighbour is that he uses most of the grain for his pig unit and pigs aren't ruminants.


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