With the majority of cattle now housed on farms across the country, attention is now turning to winter diets and what level of concentrate feed is needed to maintain acceptable levels of growth in livestock.
On dairy calf-to-beef farms, about 30% of the total feed costs goes towards making silage.
In the video below, Teagasc’s DairyBeef500 programme advisor, Fergal Maguire, explained that in some cases, farmers are under the illusion that allowing silage to ‘bulk up’ will reduce the cost of rearing and finishing cattle, but said that this is not the case.
He said “the old saying ‘penny wise and pound foolish’ comes to mind” when farmers follow the practice of focusing on silage bulk rather than silage quality.
“Studies carried out by Teagasc Grange, show there could be a difference of 48kg in live weight gain between cattle fed high-quality silage versus cattle fed low-quality silage” during winter housing.
In the example used in the video, there is a farm with two-different types of silage. There is good-quality silage with a dry matter digestibility (DMD) of 72% and poor-quality silage with a DMD of 62%.
“Cattle fed the 62% DMD silage will require 2kg of extra meal/day over a four-month period compared to the cattle that are on the 72% DMD silage.”
He explained that the cattle that were offered the lower DMD silage will need an additional 250kg of meal supplementation over the winter to maintain adequate growth rates.
“With a meal price of €350/t, that amounts to an extra €88/head in feed costs over the winter,” he explained.
He acknowledged that there is nothing farmers can do about their silage quality at this stage of the year but advised farmers “the first thing you have to do is get your silage analysed”.
“If [silage quality] is average or poor-quality DMD, then there’s still a good return on investment in feeding the extra meal as additional live weight gain over the winter will cover the extra cost of feeding.
“Going forward, the target should be to make top-quality silage,” he said.