whole crop, maize or itailian

Greengrass1

Want a big bulk of good quality for my winter milkers next year and for spring cows.
12ac to sow in a few weeks.
Its either whole crop with wheat and whole load of stuff thrown in as well as Italian
Maize silage
Or just straight Italian.
1. If I saw maize what's the cost per acre, how many cows will it feed and for how long.
2. If I undersow grass with whole crop when would I be cutting presuming its sowed in two weeks. I will be bailing this so would I be right in saying I could get 20 bales/acre?
2. Straight Italian. If thus was sown in two weeks I'd have it cut by first week in June I'd hope and hope to get a second cut so maybe its just between maize or whole crop as I could get a second cut with the whole crop so I would have more silage?

Opinions........

mf240

Have you ruled out beet. Nothing beats it for bulk.

Wish I had land good enough to grow it.

mahoney_j

Greengrass1 wrote: »

Want a big bulk of good quality for my winter milkers next year and for spring cows.
12ac to sow in a few weeks.
Its either whole crop with wheat and whole load of stuff thrown in as well as Italian
Maize silage
Or just straight Italian.
1. If I saw maize what's the cost per acre, how many cows will it feed and for how long.
2. If I undersow grass with whole crop when would I be cutting presuming its sowed in two weeks. I will be bailing this so would I be right in saying I could get 20 bales/acre?
2. Straight Italian. If thus was sown in two weeks I'd have it cut by first week in June I'd hope and hope to get a second cut so maybe its just between maize or whole crop as I could get a second cut with the whole crop so I would have more silage?

Opinions........

If for winter milk and u have the and then maize under plastic is best.itll need to be balanced for protein though when feeding.
Italian also an option ,I'm hoping to set some soon as and hope to get 4 cuts off it this year as bales.plan on cutting it for quality every 4 weeks after first cut in early June as I want quality and no stem .

sheebadog

Hard to beat good maize for milkers.
Downside is lack of protein.

farmersfriend

mf240 wrote: »

Have you ruled out beet. Nothing beats it for bulk.

Wish I had land good enough to grow it.

Beet is powerful feed, bit of work feeding it but well worth the effort.

Greengrass1

sheebadog wrote: »

Hard to beat good maize for milkers.
Downside is lack of protein.

What's the cost of just sowing maize under plastic? Inc seed.
We have down whole crop here before and it was brilliant crops. This ground loves tillage.
Wouldn't be great roadways in this field to get it out in October when its wet

Greengrass1

mahoney_j wrote: »

If for winter milk and u have the and then maize under plastic is best.itll need to be balanced for protein though when feeding.
Italian also an option ,I'm hoping to set some soon as and hope to get 4 cuts off it this year as bales.plan on cutting it for quality every 4 weeks after first cut in early June as I want quality and no stem .

Best thing with Italian is a very light coat of slurry and loads of feet.
It really drains ground if you don't feed it enough

sheebadog

Greengrass1 wrote: »

What's the cost of just sowing maize under plastic? Inc seed.
We have down whole crop here before and it was brilliant crops. This ground loves tillage.
Wouldn't be great roadways in this field to get it out in October when its wet

I've no idea what costs are in Ireland. My costs are seed-€75/ha
Chems-€45/ha.
Harvester - €65/ha

Greengrass1

sheebadog wrote: »

I've no idea what costs are in Ireland. My costs are seed-€75/ha
Chems-€45/ha.
Harvester - €65/ha

Are you sowing it yourself?

sheebadog

Greengrass1 wrote: »

Are you sowing it yourself?

Yep. Have all the tillage gear bar the silage harvester.

mahoney_j

Greengrass1 wrote: »

Are you sowing it yourself?

Costed it 2 years ago and roughly 800 an acre under plastic with 4 k gallons slurry ploughed in.thats harvested as well

Greengrass1

mahoney_j wrote: »

Costed it 2 years ago and roughly 800 an acre under plastic with 4 k gallons slurry ploughed in.thats harvested as well

Ye I've loads of dung here which maize loves us a plus

sheebadog

Greengrass1 wrote: »

Ye I've loads of dung here which maize loves us a plus

Definitely dung over slurry. Also I've seen maize planted with a one pass (cereals) system and could find no fault with it.

mahoney_j

sheebadog wrote: »

Definitely dung over slurry. Also I've seen maize planted with a one pass (cereals) system and could find no fault with it.

Do u bother with plastic out there Sheba ??.im guessing with ur weather there's no need

Sam Kade

mahoney_j wrote: »

If for winter milk and u have the and then maize under plastic is best.itll need to be balanced for protein though when feeding.
Italian also an option ,I'm hoping to set some soon as and hope to get 4 cuts off it this year as bales.plan on cutting it for quality every 4 weeks after first cut in early June as I want quality and no stem .

The only problem with Italian is it goes to seed very fast after the first cut even when cutting every 4 weeks. What if you put red clover with it no need for artificial nitrogen and less stem.

Greengrass1

sheebadog wrote: »

Definitely dung over slurry. Also I've seen maize planted with a one pass (cereals) system and could find no fault with it.

I'd prefer put it unde r plastic. Neighbour sows itveveryvyear under plastic and has verybgood crops

sheebadog

mahoney_j wrote: »

Do u bother with plastic out there Sheba ??.im guessing with ur weather there's no need

No plastic but some Samco machines around here alright.
Where people don't have irrigation they are trying plastic as it allows earlier planting. I don't see any benefit though.

blackdog1

Whole crop undersown with grass is the best I find. You get 2 rounds of extra grazing and you can start buffer feeding in august/september. Maize is a fantastic feed too but you don't have those 2 advantages and the crop is not always great. Maize to me is fantastic buffer feed with grass for spring from February to may. In a perfect world id feed maize in spring and wholecrop during the winter. We've used maize before but that was before we got a diet feeder so I might be wrong.

freedominacup

We had wholecrop barley here last year. Laid the ground out as if for reseeding. Harvested it first week in August and direct drilled grass seed the next day and we were grazing it first week in October. Would have been a lot sooner other than we were hit so badly by drought. We had arable silage here last year as well and the wholecrop out yielded two cuts on this and was of much higher quality. We can't grow good maize here consistently and there's nothing more expensive than bad maize. I think after last year the wholecrop barley has a lot to recommend it. It can be sown into April so you can get a graze in the spring, it has a short growing season allowing early reseeding. It's one of the cheapest crops ever grown here only one full fungicide and a half rate later in the season.

I think it could be very late for wheat at this stage gg.

mf240

Would you not agree with undersowing the barley with grass?

We grew peas and barley in 2011,

Disced the ground. Then spread the peas and barley with fert spreader and sowed the grass with one pass.

Sowed early may and cut in august. Savage aftergrass within 10 days.

Timmaay

freedominacup wrote: »

We had wholecrop barley here last year. Laid the ground out as if for reseeding. Harvested it first week in August and direct drilled grass seed the next day and we were grazing it first week in October. Would have been a lot sooner other than we were hit so badly by drought. We had arable silage here last year as well and the wholecrop out yielded two cuts on this and was of much higher quality. We can't grow good maize here consistently and there's nothing more expensive than bad maize. I think after last year the wholecrop barley has a lot to recommend it. It can be sown into April so you can get a graze in the spring, it has a short growing season allowing early reseeding. It's one of the cheapest crops ever grown here only one full fungicide and a half rate later in the season.

I think it could be very late for wheat at this stage gg.

Buying wholecrop from a local tillage farmer is looking like a very good possibility for me this year, I'll need to go trash out afew prices etc with them. I don't even know what sort of wholecrop it would be to be honest, like barley or wheat yet. But anyways what sort of price would you put either at, and how many kgs of dm/acre would I expect to get. What sort of volume would I need for the herd of 75cows I have, most of which are in spring milk by now? I'd expect to have about 1/2 the normal volume of grass silage this year, with the loss in rented land. And one final question, is putting the wholecrop on top of a pit of grass silage a good idea, or should I be keeping it seperate?

td5man

mahoney_j wrote: »

If for winter milk and u have the and then maize under plastic is best.itll need to be balanced for protein though when feeding.
Italian also an option ,I'm hoping to set some soon as and hope to get 4 cuts off it this year as bales.plan on cutting it for quality every 4 weeks after first cut in early June as I want quality and no stem .

How much nitrogen would you be applying for each cut?

Greengrass1

freedominacup wrote: »

We had wholecrop barley here last year. Laid the ground out as if for reseeding. Harvested it first week in August and direct drilled grass seed the next day and we were grazing it first week in October. Would have been a lot sooner other than we were hit so badly by drought. We had arable silage here last year as well and the wholecrop out yielded two cuts on this and was of much higher quality. We can't grow good maize here consistently and there's nothing more expensive than bad maize. I think after last year the wholecrop barley has a lot to recommend it. It can be sown into April so you can get a graze in the spring, it has a short growing season allowing early reseeding. It's one of the cheapest crops ever grown here only one full fungicide and a half rate later in the season.

I think it could be very late for wheat at this stage gg.

What about tritical?
We sowed that before and got on well. Have our own drill so could sow it no bother.

What ever I do I need no less than 1200 bales for next winter.

I'd say it could be barley and peas by the looks.

Another option would be to try get wheat off the neighbour but we would want to out grass silage in top of that so that's more money to the contractor.

I'm really only looking at milking 30 cows this winter as I'll be tight for quota and keep the 60 dry cows well fed

Zr105

Timmaay wrote: »

Buying wholecrop from a local tillage farmer is looking like a very good possibility for me this year, I'll need to go trash out afew prices etc with them. I don't even know what sort of wholecrop it would be to be honest, like barley or wheat yet. But anyways what sort of price would you put either at, and how many kgs of dm/acre would I expect to get. What sort of volume would I need for the herd of 75cows I have, most of which are in spring milk by now? I'd expect to have about 1/2 the normal volume of grass silage this year, with the loss in rented land. And one final question, is putting the wholecrop on top of a pit of grass silage a good idea, or should I be keeping it seperate?

Dont know about putting it on top but i think the ideal situation is to top it off with plain grass to seal it better.

See a few of the dairy men round here dropping maize in favour of whole crop, finding maize to expensive as it didnt yield wonderful for some few years in a row. Think most are going triticale.

One thing i would ask tho greengrass is would you not get self propelled in to cut the whole crop and then you could get the grain crimped as its going up the spout? If bailing it'll still be whole, and you'll be comparing it to a price to chop maize with self propelled anyways...

Greengrass1

Zr105 wrote: »

Dont know about putting it on top but i think the ideal situation is to top it off with plain grass to seal it better.

See a few of the dairy men round here dropping maize in favour of whole crop, finding maize to expensive as it didnt yield wonderful for some few years in a row. Think most are going triticale.

One thing i would ask tho greengrass is would you not get self propelled in to cut the whole crop and then you could get the grain crimped as its going up the spout? If bailing it'll still be whole, and you'll be comparing it to a price to chop maize with self propelled anyways...

Ye I said the same but the father hates getting other lads in to work. And I hate having to spend 3 days at silage and not having enough time for cows or calves

Zr105

Greengrass1 wrote: »

Ye I said the same but the father hates getting other lads in to work. And I hate having to spend 3 days at silage and not having enough time for cows or calves

I dont know, if i was going to the expense of growing wholecrop id deffinitly be getting it crimped as i think the grain would be wasted other wise. I know you'd be doing it at the cheesey stage but itd still be better crimped.
If have also thought you'd be loosing grain running it through the mower then the baler...

Think it might be hard keep rats away from bales to but I'm not to sure on that to be honest...

Greengrass1

Zr105 wrote: »

I dont know, if i was going to the expense of growing wholecrop id deffinitly be getting it crimped as i think the grain would be wasted other wise. I know you'd be doing it at the cheesey stage but itd still be better crimped.
If have also thought you'd be loosing grain running it through the mower then the baler...

Think it might be hard keep rats away from bales to but I'm not to sure on that to be honest...

Have said it all but he won't listen. I even said to disinage the conditioner on the mower and he lost it.

Zr105

Greengrass1 wrote: »

Have said it all but he won't listen. I even said to disinage the conditioner on the mower and he lost it.

pity, be hard convinced then... Also unless you can take off conditioner it would prob be as well running, as i think it would be inclined to bunch it up...

td5man

Greengrass1 wrote: »

Have said it all but he won't listen. I even said to disinage the conditioner on the mower and he lost it.

If you disengage the conditioner you'd probably have to row it up.
Mowed triticale with the moco and picked it up with the silage wagon last year with very little losses.

Greengrass1

Zr105 wrote: »

pity, be hard convinced then... Also unless you can take off conditioner it would prob be as well running, as i think it would be inclined to bunch it up...

Its a 10ft trailed krone. Could you not just open the pulleys and take out the rubber belt?

td5man

Greengrass1 wrote: »

Its a 10ft trailed krone. Could you not just open the pulleys and take out the rubber belt?

Tried mowing rushes with 10' kuhn and it was gathering them with the conditioner disengaged.