High-quality forage vital within a winter-milk system

The importance of high quality forage within a winter-milk systems was highlighted at an event in Monaghan earlier this week.

At a winter-milk event held by Lakeland Dairies and Teagasc on the farm Andrew Gilliland, near Ballybay Co. Monaghan, Teagasc’s winter-milk specialist James Dunne highlighted the importance of high quality forage.

Having cows calving in the autumn to produce milk to for liquid contracts is a high cost systems, with feed the biggest variable cost for these farms.

This cost can be reduced if high quality forage is harvested on farms for use within these winter-milk systems.

Forage quality

The importance of forage quality was highlighted by Dunne at the event, with higher quality silage reducing the need for concentrates within winter-milk systems.

Forage is the main feed used within winter-milk systems, with the quality of this having a significant impacts on the cost of production within a herd.

Using a comparison of two silage quality’s, Dunne noted that the higher dry matter digestibility (DMD) silage can support a higher level of production.

A 75% DMD silage and 8kg of concentrates can support production 32.4kg of milk, while the same concentrate feeding level and 69% DMD silage will only support 27.3kg of milk.

Higher DMD silage will results in a higher dry matter intakes/cow, which also means that cows will have a higher fibre intake.

The higher quality silage will have a low fibre value, but because dry matter intakes will be higher there will be more fibre in the diet.

Although silage that is on farms now is what farmers will have to us and formulate diets using, harvesting higher quality forage should be a focus for winter-milk producers.

Dunne noted the economic response to concentrates is not linear, that once intakes reach a level production does continue to increase.

Setting the diet

Within a winter milk system getting the diet for the cows right is extremely important.

The diet within these system should be set to match the production of the lower yielding cows rather than the top preformers.

Feed cost within winter-milk systems remain high, with Teagasc predicting feed cost of €745/cow for 2023.

The simplest way to reduce feed cost on farms is to maximise the use of the feed on farms this winter.

Baseline diets should be set to match the average cow in the herd and higher yields can then be topped up with additional concentrates.

So once you know the average production of the herd a diet should be formulation to match the requirement of the cows to achieve this production.

Cows within the herd that are producing over this can receive extra concentrates in the parlour.

This should reduce feed cost, as only the cows that need extra feed are receiving it and should not impact on the production of the herd.