Farmer Focus: Better silage storage proves ongoing conundrum

Grass has never stopped growing: the unseasonally mild weather means we still have an abundance of it, and a few team members kept joking we should have taken a sixth cut.

To be honest, it wouldn’t have been a terrible idea, although ground conditions wouldn’t ever have actually allowed it.

See also: Advice on managing silage stocks for dairy diets

About the author

Tom Stable

Tom Stable and family, Ulverston, Cumbria, milk 350 Holsteins three times a day, producing milk for Arla and ice cream for their Cumbrian Cow brand. The 300ha operation, of which two thirds is rented, grows grass, maize and winter wheat and cows average 11,800 litres.

Read more articles by Tom Stable

We housed the last of the heifers in late October. Despite pour-on wormers at housing, there’s been more coughing than I would like.

The weather obviously hasn’t helped. Every year, we say we will bring this last batch in sooner next year, then every year we get a little greedy and leave them out a bit longer than we should. Maybe one day we will learn.

The cows continue to perform well and the fertility definitely appears to have turned a corner, with both insemination and conception rates improving.

Things should remain settled now until spring, so this trend should continue and allow us to get back on track.

Our forage system tends to mean we swap from all of one silage cut to another through the year.

Layering bigger clamps or managing our clamps better would allow us to give the cows more consistency, and I’ve tried repeatedly to work out how to do it.

But I can’t come up with a better way, while still maximising the storage we have.

Milk price woes

The milk price outlook has worsened since I last wrote in here, although Arla have shielded us from the worst of it so far.

It’s just over 30 years since the demise of the Milk Marketing Board, when I was just five, so I have never really known a settled dairy industry.

I have known a few milk buyers though: Milk Marque, Arla, Wisemans, Dairy Farmers of Britain and then back to Arla.

I’m glad we landed back in what I would consider the right place, but I would honestly say it was as much by luck as judgement.

Despite the uncertainty, the new milking parlour plans are continuing. We just have to make sure we have our ducks in a row.

Drawing the plans and making decisions is extremely time consuming, and I am grateful we have such a good team of staff, which allows me the time to do it.