New varieties of clover contribute to improved organic dairying

New varieties have increased the contribution white and red clovers can make to organic dairying.

But visitors to a recent open day at Ty Gwyn, the Biotechnologies and Biosciences Research Council Farm, were told their aggressive growth could be a problem at times in the year.

Richard Weller, farm director said Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research breeders were working to get more balanced growth through the season and to produce even more compatible grass and clover varieties.

As things stood, increasing clover in the sward from late June led to excess nitrogen in the diet of dairy cows, unless a high energy/low protein buffer feed was made available.

It made sense to try to turn the extra protein of clover rich swards into saleable product by feeding cereal grains or a quality long fodder.

Mr Weller also highlighted difficulties encountered growing cereals for grain or whole-crop silage on the farm.

“We have had problems growing oats because of damage by rooks at sowing and as the crop reached the grain ripening stage. Barley crops are less attractive, but damage still occurs in the 3-4 weeks before combining. Minimal damage has occurred with triticale.”

Attempts had been made to reduce protein feed costs through improving the quality of whole-crop silage by sowing cereal/legume mixtures and increasing cutting height at harvest.

“Successful barley/vetch and oat/vetch mixtures have been grown. Triticale/vetch mixes have provided higher yields, but the later growth of spring-sown triticale compared with taller vetch plants increases risk of lodging.

In one year increasing cut height used for whole-crop spring barley from 10cm to 30cm reduced yield by 18%, but boosted digestibility from 69.8% to 77.5%. Cutting at 20cm reduced yield by 8.6%, but pushed up digestibility by 4.7%.