Peter Drucker, the famous business management consultant and author of countless books, probably never completed a fodder budget in his life but he did come up with the famous saying: “You can’t manage what you don’t measure.”

The simple seven words could sum up managing fodder supplies on cattle farms this winter.

A good weekend has meant a lot of second cuts have been saved but some ground, particularly in the west of the country, is still tender and will take another few days before it’s trafficable for silage-making machinery.

A good weather forecast for next week is also very welcome and should mean that any planned fodder can be made and saved safely. With second cuts in the yard, now is a good time to complete a simple fodder budget for your farm, which can be filled out very easily in a few minutes.

All you need to know is the amount of cattle/sheep you are planning on keeping over the winter months.

The length of the winter is a critical point and sometimes it depends on whether you are a glass-half-full type of person on a four-month winter or a glass-half-empty type on an eight-month winter. It’s important to be realistic and build in a four- to six-week buffer. Take a look back across recent years and average it out.

It’s also important to be as accurate as you can with the numbers you expect to have for the coming winter.

Section one determines what silage you need for the winter months. For example, if a farmer in Leitrim with a six-month winter had 20 suckler cows, 20 weanlings and 20 one- to two-year-olds, they would need:

This farm’s total silage requirement is 408 tonnes or 449 bales of silage.

The next step is to determine how much silage you have in the yard. If you have a silage pit that is 20 metres long by 10 metres wide and 2.2 metres high, that means there is 20 x 10 x 2.2 = 440m3, which is then divided by 1.35 to bring it to 325 tonnes of silage in the pit.

If this farmer had 400 bales in the yard, that would be the same as 360 tonnes in the yard. You can also add straw, hay or other bales in if you have them in the yard and you intend on feeding them.

Requirements

A farm’s fodder requirements will depend on how good autumn 2024 comes. I know a lot of farms that had to house cattle last week with the hope that these cattle will get back out again. If they don’t, your length of winter has to be recalculated to take account of the extra two months.

No matter what the result is, it’s important to take action early. There is no point in staring at an empty silage pit or bale yard next March and wondering at that stage where next week’s fodder is going to come out of.

Nobody wants to be backed into a corner being forced to sell cattle or being forced to buy fodder. If you know now that you are short, you can take remedial action at the beginning of the winter, rather than at the end.

A simple example of this would be taking out some over-conditioned cows and feeding some straw to them over the winter months. It doesn’t need to be every day but putting in a bale of straw every few days will reduce the amount of silage being fed.

Other ways to reduce demand would be to sell off empty/cull cows earlier than other years.

The cull cow trade is very good at the moment and farms short of fodder could take advantage of this.

Selling store cattle might also be an option where, again, the trade is quiet at the moment. Just because it was never done on this farm doesn’t mean it can’t be done to get you out of a corner. Putting cattle on higher meal feeding and straw for roughage may also be an option.

Current indications are that meal prices will be back this winter so substituting diets with more meal could be a viable option. Alternative feed options include buying silage, in pit form or bales. Buying meal or buying alternative forages like maize silage, wholecrop or fodder beet is also an option.

Haulage costs are the big one here and can add a lot to the price per tonne when feed has to be transported over long distances. Low dry matter feeds will be more expensive to transport.

Knowing where you stand is the first step and taking action is the second.

Fill out the sections above and see where your farm sits in terms of fodder supply and demand.

Calculate your fodder supply and demand here.