The importance of harvesting high-quality silage for dairy calf-to-beef systems was highlighted at a farm walk on Pat Collins' farm recently.

Pat operates a dairy calf-to-beef system on his farm near Castlemartyr, Co. Cork, and has been achieving excellent results.

Using crops grown through the farm's tillage operation and the harvesting of high-quality forage are two of the major factors behind the success.

High-quality silage

The importance of making high-quality silage was highlighted at the farm walk. Tommy Cox from Teagasc highlighted that for farms with 100 weanling calves in a dairy calf-to-beef system, a saving of 28t can be achieved.

Where 75% dry matter digestibility (DMD) silage is present in the yard for 100 animals, 14t of concentrates will be required over a 140-day housed period.

From this silage, the daily intake will be 9kg/day for weanlings, with a liveweight gain of 0.83kg/day.

Cox said that to achieve the average daily gain of 0.6kg/day for the weanlings on this silage, 1kg concentrates, or possibly even less will be required.

But if this silage quality is down at 65% DMD, intakes are reduced to 7.6kg/day and liveweight gain is reduced to 0.49kg/day.

This means that 3kg of concentrates would be required to achieve an average daily gain of 0.6kg for the group.

Advice

The quality of silage currently cannot be changed - with weather conditions this year posing a major challenge to many.

But a focus should be placed on increasing the quality of silage being harvested on farms, with the reduction in concentrate feeding having a potential saving of €9,800 (using the above example as a reference point).

Cox recommends that farmers get their silage tested to determine its DM, DMD, and crude protein - which will allow farmers to formulate a diet.

This will then allow them to determine how much concentrates are needed in the farm's diet.