Farmer Focus: Late season grazing helps winter silage budget
Eurig Jenkins © Richard Stanton Autumn came with a flush of quality grass, so we stopped feeding silage for the cows during September and only reintroduced it back into their diet in mid-October.
But the good times came to an end on 23 October as the hurricane season started and cows are now only out for grazing for a couple of hours in the morning, then back inside during the evening.
We have enough grass till mid-November on this system, although weather conditions will determine if it plans out in our favour.
See also: Advice on eking out forage supplies for winter
About the author
In the last week of October, daily grass growth is around 25kg of dry matter (DM) a hectare and average farm cover is 2,350kgDM/ha.
Our silage budget seems to think we have enough winter forage, but quite a few different factors can alter this such as the date of barren cows leaving.
Also the actual housing date of in-calf heifers has an effect, as some years they could be housed now or, in our best years, it’s mid-January.
The new tractors have been here seven months now: two John Deere 6R185s and the pocket rocket JD6R150 between them have clocked up a faultless 2,210 hours.
I’m estimating they would have done 600 hours of moving stones and soil on the new block. This was on steep slopes with very little brake use as the CommandPRO gearstick allows the engine, or gearbox, to hold the tractor back, even fully loaded.
As this was our first full AdBlue fleet, the tractors have use roughly 33 litres per 100 hours and the only time that consumption was noticeably higher, was with front and back mowers and on steep terrain. The consumption was then be halved on flat ground where the tractor did not work nearly as hard.
Some neighbours might notice that our hedges are looking rather smart this year as I managed to avoid any hours on the hedgecutter and left the tedious job for the old man.
The new block of land we bought in April is now fully finished and we managed to graze three paddocks of 8 acres (3.2ha) which were the best parts out of the total 45 acres (18ha); the rest will be left till next year.
Rhodes in Greece seems a distant memory as I’m now home with the clocks turned back. We are on countdown to drying cows off and watching some TV at night in front of the log fire.