Red Clovers, the do’s and don’ts!

Kevin O’Hara, Drystock Advisor, Teagasc Claremorris.

Many farmers in recent months have applied for the red clover silage measure when completing their BISS application. The principle behind the scheme was to encourage farmers to reduce their dependence on artificial N fertilisers while also improving the quality of the silage on their farms. The 2024 payment is €300 per hectare, to a maximum area of 20 hectares for the establishment of a Red Clover Silage mix sown between the 16th July 2023 and 15th July 2024. A reduced payment rate per hectare will apply as appropriate if eligible applications exceed the available budget for the measure. This payment rate will generally cover much of the seed cost and possibly some of the cultivation so is well worth looking into if considering some on farm reseeding.

So where to start, red clover can be sown from April to late July. However, sowing in the spring gives greater forage yields of up to 60% during the establishment year and the first harvest year than later sowing. Seeds should not be sown deeper than 1cm, to ensure seedlings have sufficient energy to emerge.  A fine, firm seed bed is required to ensure contact with soil, which is essential to seed establishment. The use of a roller prior to and after sowing is recommended. Soil testing is important, especially after ploughing, as a pH of 6.0-6.5 and Index 3 for P & K are necessary for successful establishment. These crops have high P & K demands and farmyard manures such as slurry and dung can be used to help reduce overall costs of establishment

Benefits of Red Clover on farms

Nitrogen Fixation, the primary benefit of red clover on farms is the ability to capture or ‘fix’ nitrogen from the air and feed it into the soil and surrounding plants.  It can supply 200kg N/ha/year (3.5 bags urea to the acre over the course of the year), driving grass silage production with outputs of 12-15 tonnes of dry matter/ha possible if managed correctly. High Quality red clover silage has multiple nutritive benefits including high crude protein content, which reduces the need for concentrate feeds, high mineral content, especially magnesium, reducing the risk of animal diseases and disorders linked to mineral deficiency, high palatability compared to grass silage, leading to higher intake and increased live weight gains or milk and protein yields. Red clover can also be useful to fatten store lambs in the back end of the year as it will not be economical to harvest light crops for silage later in the year

Drawbacks to red clover

While there are many positives to crops such as red clover there are other issues to consider before sowing it. Generally it is not suitable to graze with heavy livestock, for a number of reasons, 1) Cattle can get bloat if grazing large volumes of the crop in a short period, 2) it generally does not tolerate damage which can be caused by grazing and will ultimately die out of the sward leaving only the grass crop behind, 3) issues with breeding ewes on the crop, Red clover contains varying amounts of phyto-oestrogens, which may be linked with lower conception rates in breeding ewes. Oestrogen from red clover is very mobile and does not accumulate or remain long in the blood. For these reasons it is recommended to keep ewes off red clover for six weeks either side of mating. This also applies to red clover in silage.

Another issue is the storing of red clover bales.  The bales from these crops are generally extremely heavy and many would suggest they are better stored unstacked as there can be large volumes of run off and bales become very misshapen when stacked on top of each other.

Weed control can also become an issue in crops if poor post emergence weed control is achieved. As clover is susceptible to most broad leaf herbicides the time to manage weeds is before sowing with the fields in question been burn off before cultivation and also with a good post emergence spray which is clover safe after sowing.

All in all there are many pros and cons to the crop.  It is suitable to all farming sectors but the management of the crop is key if yields and persistency are to be achieved. For more information contact your local Teagasc office or seed merchant.