Watch: 'Silage isn't going to last forever' - farmers battling drought
Farmers around the country, especially in the southeast, are battling a continuing drought, and many of them are well into their fodder supplies at this stage.
With grass growth at extremely low levels, farmers are dipping into silage, nuts and other sources of feed to keep animals fed.
The seriousness of the situation was laid bare at a series of farm walks in southeastern counties that took place today (Thursday, August 13).
The series of seven farm walks were organised by the Irish Farmers' Association (IFA).
Agriland attended a number of these to speak to the farmers there about their concerns for grass growth and fodder, and how they are managing at the moment.
One farmer, Trevor Lazenby, spoke to Agriland at a farm walk in Co. Laois, and said that his 95 cows are currently on 6kg of nuts in the milking parlour and 3kg of soya hulls in the diet feeder per day; as well as five bales of silage.
"I had 200 bales by the end of May. At the moment now I'd down to 30.
"Milk yields have dropped in general as you might expect, and there's no fresh grass in the diet. They're holding at 18L per day at the moment on the feed I have them on," Lazenby said.
He added: "Silage isn't going to last forever, and if this continues on we're going to have to look at buying in more feed for the farm."
In a farm walk in Co. Carlow, dairy farmer and former TD Pat Deering said that he has been feeding silage to his 120-cow liquid milk herd for the last six weeks, saying that the situation is "very challenging at the moment".
"[There is] absolutely no grass... [We're] feeding about 8kg of nuts in the parlour as well," Deering said.
"Fortunately we had a lot of bale silage made earlier in the year. That's probably going to disappear fairly rapidly now.
Deering added: "The issue is going to be even if we do get rain in the next short while - and it doesn't really look like it - we're not going to have grass until I would say mid-to-late September, which is probably going to be getting late anyway.
"The growth is going to be dropping off at that stage of the year anyway," he said.
While the former TD said that his cows have "held their own" in terms of milk yield, due to early use of buffer feeding when grass first looked like it was going to get tight, he also said that "the issue is going to be how long will it last".
'We have absolutely nothing'
In a farm walk in Co. Wexford, Steven Rothwell said that his cows and calves are eating a bale per day at the moment.
"We have absolutely nothing now here. It's all scarce and the drought has been hard now," he said.
Rothwell added: "The last time we got real good rain was June 20, and today we're fierce lucky to have got that rain."
"The whole of July and for the most part of August now there's been no rain at all.
On the same farm walk Simon Byrne told Agriland: "In the last couple of years I've been changing my farming system and I thought I was going to be prepared for a dry summer.
"I sowed less barley, sowed 16ac or 17ac of tyfon. I sowed it May 8. Half of it I'm able to graze, the other half I have never grazed it yet and it should be on its second rotation," Byrne said.
He added: "I have fields sprayed off for stubble turnips since June 8; not sowed because it's been too dry.
He said: "I have another 8.5ac of multi species grass, the most expensive I could get, €130/ac.
"I reckon it's a 50% failure with the drought.
"I have 480 ewes at the minute and there all on silage, feeding roughly two bales of silage a day," Byrne told Agriland.
Additional reporting by Thomas Maher.
