Silage 2024

Going to organise silage samples before housing going to sample roughly 10bales from first cut and 10 bales from second cut should I buy a silage core for doing this or just take a piece of silage from each of the bales. Also looking at Oldcastle labs they recommend not sampling bales for 10-12weeks but my second cut is only 8weeks cut should I leave the second cut for a few more weeks or is 8 weeks plenty.

https://www.grasstecgroup.com/p/bale-silage-sampler/balesilagesampler?srsltid=AfmBOooSj8S9mnHLgi8F2qf0Ou4u708Ke4W8oNV07af-efj5gBTtrEa6

That's all I will be taken is one sample for each cut so two samples in total. But I wondering should I take a sample from say 5 different bales from first cut and then mix them all up in the sample bag and do the same for second cut as not all fields make the same silage

How long would you leave before sampling seen some say 10 weeks but I would have though 8 weeks would be ok

Not a lot if the bale was well packed, no holes in plastic and the bale is from.the middle of the stack

However a sample in January/February is not much use to use for that year. However silage varies little from year to year if made at similar times

that’s a wrap for 2024.

Hopefully

should be grand but didn’t help that cattle broke into where silage bales were and made shite of about 20 bales. Was elec fence in front of it but had being unturned off and not back on again 😟

got my silage results back today. Overall I think I’m happy my first cut was two weeks later than planned

first cut

second cut

the protein is abit disappointing not sure how to get that up for next year. Overall I’m happy enough. Was hoping to feed weanlings 2kg of nuts along with this silage and they should do ok. And dry cows will be ok

Was cut around the 10th of June and then again at last days of July. Would that be considered good silage or just average? Also the first cut is 38% there should be a lot of feeding in them bales I hope or maybe its to dry

protein levels in grass were well back this year everywhere according to my feed rep. I always give weanlings at least 2kg of a 16% protein meal regardless of results, they are still growing and need every bit of it. I’ve replacements here coming 3 next spring that were reared in two batches and the ones that got no meal in their first winter are way behind in size now where they were way ahead at weaning. I know a lot will disagree but they need looking after when growing.

I’m not sure to be honest as it’s something that I’m aiming to improve myself is silage quality, this is stuff I cut the end of May, hoping it should be good

Looks similar to my own. I normally try to cut myself at last week of may but I think the weather was bad or something i can’t really remember but I got delayed anyway.

I have suckler stock and I have space and feed so considering buying either some dairy beef weanlings or suckler heifers. I would be aiming to get a kg a day roughly I hope anyway.

What are you feeding?

Don't give them anything other than minerals here.

They'll make it back on grass

Unless silage quality was dire I don't feed ration to them

Usually keep about 50 weanling bulls over the winter. Don’t house them until mid December. They go onto 2kg a day until early February. Then cut them back to a kg a day until a week or so before they go out. Try to get them out from mid March on.
I think bulls especially need to be kept thriving.

Housed 1 1/2 year old bulls this last two weeks that have done a kg a day since last October. For an extra €45 a head over the winter I think it’s well worth feeding them. It’s also a great way of picking out a sick one.

Sorry to bring back up these silage results but I just noticed something about them that the ammonia levels in the 2 sample's are very different with the first cut being 4.69% which means excellent fermentation and the second cut which is 14.30 which is still ok

But the reason I wanted to bring it up is there was one difference between both these cuts which I think caused the second cut to not ferment as good as first cut. This is all baled silage and the first cut there was film applied to the bales and the second cut was netting. so That means for me going forward I will be using film on film in future it may be more expensive bur it seems like it is going to make a difference