silage ?

We make two types of silage. Good silage for milkers and stemmier bulkier stuff for dry cows.

Well that do be the plan. In 2012 we ended up with little flat bales of wrapped misery and misfortune for everything.
 
headcase said:
With sucklers you need 2 lots of bales
Shyte until they calve and tidy stuff after
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I hear loads of lads on about springers saying anything will do. Mine seem to say different :scratchhead:. OK they don't need as good a silage but if I was just to throw them any old stuff before calving I would definitely pay the price after they had calved, as in very hard to keep condition and them repeat bulling.
The other side of it is shite silage will get wolfed down fearce fast while a reasonably good quality silage will last a lot longer. At the price of silage making when you include fert contractor winter feeding time and whatever else let it be pit or bales it needs to be better than a lot of clowns do make. How much cheaper dose lesser quality silage actually work for the farmer when all things are taken in ????
 
Maybe it was a bit to much of a sweeping statement to say any sort of silage.

Can anyone put a figure on the kind of dmd you'd need silage at. For ad lib feeding to dry sucklers.
 
headcase said:
Cows need to be dried off in good condition then just fed maintenance food or you get big calves
Once calved then feed them to milk and keep condition
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We all know there can be detrimental affects to cows getting fed meals or top quality timely but there not always the reason for big calf's.
As one local farmer says " you want your cows fit, not fat when calving "
Yet I know one local farmer who is always late weaning his cows. They are fairly shook by the time he will house them and then horses them what would usually be good silage. They generally calf down at big weights having done exceptionally well over the winter and nearly all have big well boned and fleshed calf's. Rarely has to pull a calf even. Lucky I guess :scratchhead:
If I done the same well I need say no more I think :whistle:
 
Bog Man said:
We used to grow grass for seed . Basically you sowed mother seed at a very low seeding rate and used a combine to trash out the seeds when it had ripened and the moisture had dropped . We would then bale up the grassed hay and feed it to dry suckler cows during the winter . The vet looked at it one day and said the cows would die if we continued feeding it . I asked him when was the last time he was out with us to a calving .
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I would bet my boots that silage had a high mineral content. It'd be far superior feed than stuff turning brown/black at the butt.
 
Peter said:
This year's effort. This silage was fertilised on the 17 th of march. It got 3 bags of cut sward to the acre and it was topped up with 3000 gallons of slurry to the acre a week later. It was mowed on the afternoon of the 23rd of May and it was picked up the next day. No tedding or raking was done in between. The silage has been tested but I didn't get the results back yet.
View attachment 41084 View attachment 41085
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I finally got the results back today. Virtual Mars mar to the nearest guess on dm and dmd.
 
headcase said:
Cows need to be dried off in good condition then just fed maintenance food or you get big calves
Once calved then feed them to milk and keep condition
Click to expand...
another reason not to have them to fat when calving is that they start to loose there appetite , then when they do calve and you start to pump the milk out of them there just not eating enough to get them through there peak yeald , before you know it they turn to skeletons before your eyes and start to use up muscle to maintain there milk production leading to acid anemia and then they just crash , go from 50+kg milk a day to 15 :tdown: .
you want them on a "rising plain of nutrition" before they calf
 
Peter said:
I finally got the results back today. Virtual Mars mar to the nearest guess on dm and dmd.
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I'm far from knowledge about silage dmd or the likes but by the looks of the grass in the pictures plus cutting date I would be thinking you should have very good quality feed there.
 
This is better than Play Your Cards Right, where's Bruce Forsyth when you need him......... HIGHER!! HIGHER!! LOWER!! HIGHER!!
 
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