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There seems to be sufficient silage available on most farms but good silage is running out fast. Most farmers keep a stock of good-quality bales for late March and April to be fed to milking cows in a grass deficit or in bad weather.
With most herds housed for varying periods over the last week, a lot of these bales have been used up. Make sure that you only feed what good silage you have to milking cows.
At this stage, most of the dry cows should be in reasonably good body condition score having had a long dry period so they don’t require good silage.
If feeding silage to milking cows, it is worth knowing how much is in the bale or the grab. This helps when allocating grass. Weigh a few bales or grabs and either estimate the dry matter or get it analysed. Normal silage is usually around 20% dry matter. At this stage, average dry matter intake in a typical spring-calving herd should be around 12 or 13kg of total intake. Deduct how much meal and silage is being fed to work out how much grass to allocate.
Dairy management: weather and meal feeding
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