Early May harvest essential for winter milk silage

Profitable winter milk systems rely on the availability of high quality silage, with 75-80DMD targeted to lessen the requirement for concentrate feed over the winter months.

Speaking as part of the recent ‘Protecting Margins on Winter Milk farms after a tough Spring’ webinar, Advisor on the Teagasc/Aurivo Joint Programme, John McCabe pointed to a number of cutting dates farmers should aim for to ensure the production of quality silage for their winter milk herds.

The aim, John explained, is to produce high yields of very digestible silage that is well preserved. As cutting date moves later into May, more fibre will be present on account of the additional bulk, second cut yields will be reduced and an expensive winter diet for cows will follow. Alternatively, where an early May cutting date is achieved, less fibre will be present in the silage, a heavier second cut will be obtained and a cheaper winter diet based on a silage capable of supporting higher intakes will result.

“The more fibre that you push into your silage by delaying it out into May, the less the cow is going to be able to eat,” John explained, adding: “We want to reduce the amount of fibre, the amount of stem, because we want the cows to eat more silage and we want the cows to eat better silage.”

After a challenging spring, John pointed to a May 5-10 cutting date as the optimum for silage for winter milk systems, noting this will allow sufficient time to achieve high yields of second cut in late June. However, this will vary depending on the level of grazing achieved on farm this spring.

“We do have ground un-grazed since the end of September, start of October, that really needs to be gone by May 5 to feed a winter milk cow in a profitable way because it could drop from good quality to poor quality in the space of a week if we don’t do it,” he said.

He added: “If it was grazed bare in autumn or spring, we would say it needs to be cut before May 12. And if it is grazed recently, it needs to be cut before May 18-20 for a winter milk cow.”

The ‘Protecting Margins on Winter Milk farms after a tough Spring’ webinar was produced as part of the Teagasc/Aurivo Joint Programme. Watch John’s full presentation to the webinar below: