silage

whymeagain

this has been probably asked before but how many bales of silage would be needed to keep thirty in calve cows for the winter

martinangus

you are talking about 1.4 to 1.5 bales per month to my mind .

martinangus

per cow that is sorry

reilig

It depends on whether your bales were baled dry or wet and whether they were wilted or not. My bales are wilted this year to about 70% DM and I expect that 1 bale will do 20 cows per day. If you cut silage and don't wilt or get bad weather, DM could be as low as 20%.

Here's the scientific way to work it out with a few examples:

Suckler Cows require 13kg of dry matter feed per day.

Weinlings (300kg) require 7kg of dry matter feed per day.

Here's an example.

A farmer with 20 suckler cows.
5 month winter = 150 days.
Each cow will require 1950kg dry matter feed for the winter.
20 cows will need 39000kg of dry matter feed for the 5 months.

Now, how much dry matter is in a bale:
Well the answer is that it will vairy from farmer to farmer - on how they made their bales.

An example:

A bale of silage which was cut with a conditioner mower at 1pm and baled the next day at 1pm with no rain could have a DM of 30%. The bale weighs 700kg (approx).

Therefore, in that bale there would be 210kg of dry matter.
Therefore you would need approximately 185 of these bales to feed 20 cows for 5 months.

A further example:

An unwilted bale - cut with a conditioner mower, damp when cutting and baled within 2 hours of cutting.
Dry matter could be 20%.

Bale weighs 800kg and has 160kg of dry matter in it.

You would need (39000 / 160) approximately 244 bales for the 5 month winter.

Example 3

Cut with a disc mower on day 1, tedded day 2, rowed on day 3. Dry weather.
3/4 in hay or haylege.
DM of 70%. (Hay has a DM of 85% to 90%
Bale weight 500kg

DM per bale 350kg.

111 bales needed for the 20 cows.


You can't really tell if you have enough silage by just counting the bales. You could supplement silage. Meal or straw can be supplimented as DM - both would have a DM of 95% to 98%.

whymeagain

reilig wrote: »

It depends on whether your bales were baled dry or wet and whether they were wilted or not. My bales are wilted this year to about 70% DM and I expect that 1 bale will do 20 cows per day. If you cut silage and don't wilt or get bad weather, DM could be as low as 20%.

thank for the info reilig i`ve 230 bales of good silage don`t think i`ll have enough

just do it

whymeagain wrote: »

thank for the info reilig i`ve 230 bales of good silage don`t think i`ll have enough

Reiligs method is definitely the best way to go but here's a simpler calculation courtesy of my neighbour who is a silage contractor. As a rule of thumb with your average decent quality silage bale (in a normal year!) you'll need 10-12 bales per cow. That's based on a 5-6 month winter here in the Wet West;).

reilig

just do it wrote: »

Reiligs method is definitely the best way to go but here's a simpler calculation courtesy of my neighbour who is a silage contractor. As a rule of thumb with your average decent quality silage bale (in a normal year!) you'll need 10-12 bales per cow. That's based on a 5-6 month winter here in the Wet West;).

You just have to be careful when calculating silage in that way - especially when it was such a wet year and a lot of silage was baled wet.

At the farm walk that I got the above figures, the advisor started off by asking how long will one of your bales last 5 cows. Some people said that they had baled their silage from the conditioner rows straight after mowing and they felt that cows ate them very fast because they were great quality - a bale would las 5 cows no more than 2 days. one guy said that he often baled silage when it was very wet and that cows could have it gone in a day. People were shocked when I opened one of my bales and they saw how dry it way - almost in hay. They were even more shocked when I told them that a bale would last 5 cows for 4 days or 20 cows per day.

I supose my point is that this year wasn't a normal year. Most people didn't wilt silage - if you didn't get the opportunity to wilt silage, it won't go as far as you hope.

bogman_bass

I think you are a bit off with your DM contents of meal Reilig. Grain at 2% moisture?

85 - 90% would be more like it. maybe even less if there is a lot of molasses in it

reilig

bogman_bass wrote: »

I think you are a bit off with your DM contents of meal Reilig. Grain at 2% moisture?

85 - 90% would be more like it. maybe even less if there is a lot of molasses in it

It was just an estimation. Its not really central to the op's question about how much silage he/she will need.

bogman_bass

whymeagain wrote: »

thank for the info reilig i`ve 230 bales of good silage don`t think i`ll have enough

jhow do you know they're good? have you tested them? A lot of silage will be well perserved but was cut late and have a low DMD value. I heard values as low as 58% up in Cavan over the weekend

aidanki

reilig wrote: »

It depends on whether your bales were baled dry or wet and whether they were wilted or not. My bales are wilted this year to about 70% DM and I expect that 1 bale will do 20 cows per day. If you cut silage and don't wilt or get bad weather, DM could be as low as 20%.

Here's the scientific way to work it out with a few examples:

how would DMD fit into this calculation