In pictures: what’s the plan for first-cut silage?

Garreth McCormack hosted the first farm walk of BETTER farm phase three on Thursday. One hundred and fifty visitors descended on the 34ha farm, located on the outskirts of Bailieborough. The farm is excellently set up for grazing and while intermittent in nature, the first rotation is almost complete. Garreth McCormack's functional cattle crush costings.

However, Garreth is well behind where he was in 2017 from a grassland point of view in terms of both grazing and nutrient spreading.

Teagasc B&T adviser Conal Murnaghan covered silage making on the day and the question arose as to what the plan was where fertiliser had been delayed.

“For someone around here who hasn’t been able to graze off silage ground and won’t get to spread fertiliser until the middle of next week when ground dries out, what should they do about first cut? Do they still aim for a late-May cut or delay it?”

Weaning efficiency performance.

The advice was to cut losses, forget grazing and aim for a late-May cut, reducing nitrogen levels accordingly when spreading does occur (allowing for N-uptake of two units per day – eg 80 units if there’s to be 40 days between spreading and cutting). The focus then should be to aim for a quality, earlier second cut.

“I know some guys were caught out and couldn’t take a second cut last year, but they were generally the ones who went late and that was largely due to the fact that their first cut might have been late or they didn’t go hard enough with fertiliser,” Murnaghan commented.

Cows grazing on the day of the farm walk.

When a crowd member highlighted the importance of going for bulk and not necessarily silage quality when taking cuts, BETTER farmer and host Garreth McCormack argued against.

“I always go for quality here. I can restrict cows when I’m feeding so we don’t make poorer-quality stuff on purpose. Bulk is important but because I measure grass weekly a lot of my silage comes from surplus grass that I take out during the main season. My contractor is out here most weeks making bales. They’ve been invaluable to me obviously this spring and because of the leafiness of the grass they’re better quality than my main cut (~72% DMD).”

The next BETTER farm spring walk is on Tuesday 10 April at 4pm in Castlebaldwin, Co Sligo. Eircode: F52 DY24

Clip from Garreth McCormack's #BETTERfarm walk today - talking sire usage on heifers and winter fodder requirements #sucklers pic.twitter.com/w8Gu6rLoqL

— FJ Beef (@FJBeef) April 5, 2018

See more pictures in gallery.

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Watch: BETTER beef farm walks begin this Thursday

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