Silage 2026

Silage around here this last week or so. No surprise anymore how early some start.

Will hopefully cut some of 1st cut next week, probably 5-6 bales acre. Waste of time and money making a big heap of middling silage for milking cows. Silage fields cut in a 3-4 cut system are far more efficient producing feed than fields cut only once or twice in heavy cuts.

I see farm theory done half is first cut 150 acres. Was watching his tik tok and thinking to myself this lad is good and thinks he’s better than that again and he also does winter milking, he will do prob 5cuts this year now he’s off to an early start but wonder why he’s not doing 50acres of maize silage I think it would be a no brainer for him

Have to make a decision here aswell, ill try for the 10th anyway see how it goes. Was in the north today, lot of silage cut.

I did that last year and it was very good silage. Leafy but easy conserve as silage. I'm hopefully doing the same again this week and then I'll load on the slurry and fert.

Just for me then where it is in the stack then it'll be the last silage fed in spring next year when the cows will be calved and milking. So a few angles covered.

You'd always be picking up some new method or practice every year or experience.

The opposite without the fertiliser. Now i have done things maybe different than other farmers like gypsum, burnt lime, molasses in slurry, over the years.

Just this evening I noticed the calves are not really bothering with the meal which I put in this afternoon. I moved them into a shed beside three dry cows Saturday. I'm splitting a silage bale between the cows and calves. They were in another house prior on straw and meal and hoovering up the meal. Now today they've filled up on the silage and are non plussed really on the meal. That's this leafy silage replacing both straw and meal to the calves. The cows don't really eat much silage when it's good too. It's like there's so much sugar or brix they require and they'll consume more to get that amount if the amount is low in the forage. If it's high they'll eat less kgs.

Pictures of the silage and the meal not eaten this evening. Still on milk.

It's nothing to do with me. But it's only coincidental. A homeopathy farmer in Cork is going feeding their calves wet silage to replace meal both inside and outside on pasture. They are doing this on advice from a homeopathy farmer in New Zealand that's eliminated meal feeding in calves by replacing with as top quality wet grass silage as possible made.

There'd be no herbicide either on this nor for years on this particular silage.

I asked my lad and he simply wont/can't answer. Thats with harvester. Baler man was talking about going back to net wrap to save a euro/bale. No full price either.

Same price here as last year, 85 a load for wagon plus vat and 13 a acre plus vat for raking, offered to supply the diseal and knock it off didnt want to go that way , 15 litres a load on average, bringing circa 2 acres of grass on a 3km average round-trip...

Self-propelled crew locally reckons 165 a acre up 15 on last year for short draws, once diseal dosent go crazy in price

Anyone pulled the trigger yet?

I see a few small bits knocked for bales but no big outfits yet.

Weather looking iffy next week, might go this weekend

I'm getting mine tested for nitrates tomorrow and I'll have to pull the trigger then if it's wet next week.

Wasn't grazed and received minimal fertilizer but looks good and leafy. If only the heat stuck around a bit longer.