Doesn't the dew stay on the grass a long time now. Know a lad who made bales on 8th December one year
Walked the place today, I have a lot of grass aswell. I have 6-7 acresof really heavy covers . Its in two padocks, I is 4 acres the other 2+. I have the stores split into bunches of over twenty and will let them graze thereway throug it. I moved the heavy bullocks into a 5 acre paddock that has about 1600 cover. They will graze it and I will get stores to clean it out. I be closing from now on. When the heavy covers are eaten the rest will be gone through fairly fast.
Ideally thats what I would do but the problem if you could call it a problem is that I have an abundance of grass. I'll make a decision in the next 24 hours.
Anything other than molasses that you put on to help it ensile better ? I'm assuming whey or whey concentrate isn't readily got from cheese plants ...
You are baling a product that will be high teens in DM at best. With dry weather for the next 10 ish days and dry ground I would try to strip graze it with stores
It'd be very low DM, Polythene'll be worth more than the feed value.
Gonna do Similar here this week and bale it.
Have a paddock here that's very strong. Took a second cut of bales of it just over 6 weeks ago. Got a shake of pasture sward as the plan was to graze it.
With a few fine days coming would I be mad to cut and bale it ? Its dry ground so not worried about doing any damage.
Actually probably will be selling before housing. Due to Beam & the fact that our silage quality is poor enough.
Just thought as well that the grass quality would be deteriorating as well these times
Probably a bit high alright, often grew it here for malting andand it tested 14%P just to annoy me.
that might be different sort of protein.
a long time since I mixed my own rations, a pain in teh ares of a job
6 x 11 + 1 x 48 = 114 /7 = 16.3% protein.
That is if barley is 11% protein.
Six parts barley to one part soya is about a 16 -17% protein ration.
It's usually written on the bag of minerals how much to give per animal
I priced them from dairygold like everything else gone up to E19/bag .I have 16 late calves never out about 160/180 kg will be feeding them 1.5 kg rolled barley and some soya .What amount of minerals per day roughly and what amount of soya anyone?
They also stated in another article how even with high protein silage and two kilos of a 16% nut that weanlings were well below the required protein levels needed to maintain growth at optimum levels.
stores are different but I was always disappointed with weanlings that didn’t get at least 2kg over the winter.
Dairygold has good minerals as well. About 17/25kg bag
I always found Agritech had good minerals.
https://agritech.ie/livestock-mineral-supplements/beef/welmin-beef/
any link online for where to buy bagged minerals?
Correct Teagasc did research the results were published last spring and anything over two kgs was a complete waste. Even the difference between 2kgs and 0kgs where the correct amount of minerals were did not really give an economic return. That was with 70-72 DMD silage. I go as you do 0.8kgs/ head/ day and top it up with bagged minerals so they are getting 20 grams/100 kgs
Whatever about them being able to take it, couldn’t see it being viable to give over 5lb nuts to weanlings on grass (I’m taking from your post that these are not weanlings you’ll be selling)
if they were mine, I’d be sticking with the 1.7kg. Only giving 2lb at present to my own and they’re doing fine.
May be no harm to take a dung sample from her, while the grass can cause it could be rumen fluke as well, vet has come across a few cases
Had a Cow go downhill very quickly over the last few days, seems that there just isn't the feed value in that leafy wet grass and it was just running through her. On top of which the calf on her is a more hungry in the wet cold weather. I have her housed and the calf removed. It could be an early housing for her as I don't think she'll build up again that quickly
That is true to an extent and maybe on places with s little Ng winter it makes sense. But bales cost money to make. Bales this time of year will be sub 20 DM, dawn to 15-17%. It's much harder to bale.
The DM in bales will be as low as 15-17% so 130-160kgs DM/bale. They are harder to handle and for ever kg of DM an animal eats they will take in they will take in 6kgs of water which during winter or a hard cold Spring will be only 6-8C. That liquid will be heated to body heat 38C before it is excreted.
Hi, grass tightening up and I suppose losing value so thinking of upping the ante with the concentrates for weanlings, Feb/Mar born stock. Getting about 1.7 kg per day now......question is how much would be too much in one feed for those stock?
Would 2.5kg per day in 1 go be too much?
Better looking at the bales than looking for them...they'll be ate
I bought an applicator for the baler the following year. Thankfully I didn’t have to make any October silage of my own since then but if the circumstances dictate that it has to be done in the future, then I’d certainly be using the additive on it. Do you mind me asking what additive you use?
I had some baled in October '18 some got the additive and the cattle went mad for them the silage in the bales was a dark brown with sweet smell ,
2018 was a very late year for grass. It was almost into November when we finished baling. Nearly half of what we baled that year was done in September and October. I baled some of my own in mid October that year and I swore never again would I make silage in October. I tried feeding the bales around Xmas and they were still as green as when they were baled. I left them and said I’d use them last. In early March i fed some and they were terrible. They didn’t look too bad and were reasonably dry but there was a smell off them I’d never got from silage before and the cattle would stand at the barrier roaring with the hunger rather than eat them. I forced them to eat a certain amount and I used the rest for bedding the following year just to get rid of them.
If anyone does need to make bales at this time of year I’d strongly recommend using an additive and at least you might get some value back from them.
Weather always closes things down here regardless of plans, just a question of getting a grazing off the more suitable spring paddocks in oct if we can to help things out then.
Agreed I made bales in Oct 2018, and they were nearly as green as the day they were baled when feeding lol. Cow's thankfully still ate them, but I definitely wouldn't be bothered again.
Autumn rotation planner, so everyone still closing up 1st paddocks 1st of October lol?
I be similar to Moo and would not be inclined to make bales with it. I try to get cattle to eat out as much as possible. Strip graze although I am not a fan of that either.
