Teagasc has produced an ‘oats factsheet’, which summaries the role this unique cereal can play within Irish beef finishing systems.

In essence, Teagasc trials have shown that when feeding finishing beef cattle on a grass silage-based diet, rolled oats performed just as effectively as rolled barley.  

In Ireland, native produced cereals such as oats are important for increasing self sufficiency in feed, as the country is heavily reliant on imports.

Approximately five million tonnes of feed ingredients are imported per year.

Significantly, Ireland produces approximately 200,000-250,000t.

The cereal is used for human consumption (porridge), feed within the equine industry, and in ruminant feeds.

In 2025, native oats have been priced very competitively compared to barley, making them a practical option for reducing winter feed costs without sacrificing performance.

The research dimension

Two beef cattle finishing experiments at Teagasc Grange have found that the feeding value of rolled oats was similar to rolled barley when used as a supplement to grass silage.

The grass silage was offered ad lib and the concentrate (coarse mixture) feeding level was 4.0kg dry matter (DM) per animal per day, split over two equal feeds - morning and evening.

Researchers replaced rolled barley with rolled oats, plus a small quantity of additional protein feed in the concentrate ration.

The results of the trials pointed to there being no difference in performance between the cattle fed the oats-based versus those fed the barley-based concentrate across several measures: grass silage and total DM intake, daily live weight gain, or feed efficiency.

In addition, replacing barley with oats had no negative effect on slaughter weight, carcass weight, kill-out proportion, estimated carcass gain, or carcass conformation and fat scores.

Overview

The research showed that while oats and barley have different chemical compositions, these differences did not negatively impact the animals' final performance when fed as supplements to grass silage.

Oat grain is naturally higher in fibre and fat, lower in starch and has a slightly lower crude protein concentration compared to barley.

Despite these differences, the overall feeding value proved to be similar to rolled barley.

When indigenous cereals like oats replace imported feeds, it reduces reliance on long supply chains.

According to Teagasc, the carbon footprint of native Irish oats is low, typically ranging from 187–206kg of carbon dioxide equivalent per tonne (CO₂e/t).

This is significantly lower compared to imported grains, which can have carbon footprints in the range  300–380kg CO₂e/t.