This year’s silage is lower quality than hoped for, but nowhere near as poor as the fodder that was made during the disastrous summer of 2012.

Looking back on 2016, I have some sort of vague recollection that cutting dates were delayed slightly, but probably like most farmers, my imagination had transformed slightly stemmy grass into exquisite material by the time this winter arrived.

Then I opened a few bales and noticed a few more seed heads than expected.

If I try to focus on the positives, high dry matter (DM) has kept the predicted intake values on the high side, and this has resulted in sweet smelling material that sheep find palatable. Therefore, my conclusion is that the use of my new toy (a swath turner) has helped to offset the potential negative combination of average D-value grass, and low dry matters.

The boffins within our industry might not agree, but I still consider dry, palatable silage to be of the utmost importance when feeding bales to sheep, even if it means some sacrifice on the ME figure. My thinking would be different if I were only feeding cattle – ensuring grass is ensiled at a leafy stage of growth would then be my main aim.

Samples

In my case, four samples were submitted for analysis: three samples from my baled silage and one sample from the clamp.

They are remarkably similar in energy values, and range from 10.2 ME, to 10.6 (an ME figure of 11 or above is what I’m aiming for).

Protein levels are similarly bunched, and only vary from 9.8 to 11.3.

However, the interesting bit concerns dry matter; the highest energy sample has a DM of only 21%, and this plunges it into fourth place, while one of the lowest energy samples (10.3 ME) is rescued by a 43% DM.

Anything over 40% has a noticeably dry feel to it, and is closer to haylage than true silage.

On a practical level, twin-bearing ewes will need meal feeding from about five weeks pre-lambing, and the recommendation is for 0.2kg concentrate to be gradually stepped up to about 0.7kg two weeks before lambing. On the cattle front, 4kg meal and ad-lib silage should result in a 500kg steer gaining 1kg per day.

Guide

All these recommendations are a good guide, but no more. It is imperative to finetune the meal feeding according to your gut instinct, and how the stock is actually performing.

One of my pet suspicions has been borne out this year, although as always, it happened accidentally. For ease of management, I placed two ring feeders with various groups of sheep, and always put in bales from the same batch.

Despite all bales appearing to be identical, the sheep cleaned one to the floor, leaving the other less than half-eaten. This happened every time, leading me to wonder just how much deviation there is between the sample submitted for analysis, and the true average across all silage? Let’s face it; we don’t pull a bit of rancid stuff out of a clamp or bale for testing.

Of course, the acid test of silage quality concerns body condition of stock. My earliest batches of ewes (set to lamb at the beginning of March) were scanned in December, fed ad-lib silage (outside), and then handled again one month later.

Despite the sheep gorging themselves on it, the harsh reality is that my aromatic silage, with an ME of 10.5, has just about maintained body condition. I suppose the term ‘‘just about’’ is one of those farming expressions that are open to an optimistic interpretation, and perhaps I should admit to myself that they’ve probably shed a couple of pounds.