Silage Advisory Centre

In the United Kingdom, grassland farmers seek to take three or in some cases four cuts of silage, while in Ireland even a third cut is rare. The first cut, taken when the grass (and therefore the ensuing silage) is at its nutritional best is, on all but the smallest farms, almost always ensiled in clamps or pits built for the purpose.

Once the clamp has been closed to allow fermentation to begin, ideally it should not be opened until required for use when animals have been housed for the winter; second and third cut grass should not simply be added as it becomes available as this introduces oxygen into the clamp and thus compromises both the silage already in the clamp and the forage just being added.

Grassland management tool

Baled silage is a modern grassland management tool that can help farmers maximise the utilisation of grazing grass whilst producing high quality baled silage for use either as a buffer feed when grazing is limited or for high-yielding dairy cows that need very high quality grass silage.

According to The Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences (IBERS), Aberystwyth University, in this system grass utilisation can be maximised by rotational paddock grazing.

“At times when grass growth is rapid, grass supply often exceeds grazing requirements”, says Rhun Fychan, research scientist at IBERS.  “Many farmers ‘top’ this over-supply with a topper to maintain grass quality. Whilst topping tidies the field, it does not remove all the stale inedible grass. To remove this material completely it is preferable to use a mower down to 4-5 cm, which will then enable fresh, high D-value grass to grow.

“However, by paying attention to grazing management by estimation of weekly grass growth compared to requirements would enable the farmer to take a paddock out of the grazing rotation and set it aside for baled silage production, then not only can grazed grass utilisation be maximised but high quality silage can be produced in convenient bale sized quantities for feeding when grazed grass supply is insufficient to meet the dairy cows’ intake requirements,” continues Rhun. 

Reducing wastage of grass

“This approach reduces the wastage of grazed grass over the grazing season.  The silage produced can also be used when a small number of high producing dairy cows are housed early and opening a large silage clamp is, from a silage clamp management perspective, a last resort.”

Another significant benefit of the baled silage approach within the rotational grazing system is that if grass growth reduces, provided excessive nitrogen fertilizer is not applied, silage can be harvested earlier than the standard 6 week re-growth period, the paddock is then released back into the rotational grazing system thus again maximising the utilisation of grazed grass.

Highly flexible system

Ultimately the system is highly flexible and offers the potential to reduce costs whilst maximising milk yields and financial returns. “It is important to remember that while grazed grass is the cheapest feed on farm ranging from £30 to £50/t DM, silage is still one of the cheapest winter feeding options at £60 to 120/t DM”, says Norbert Schulze, silage marketing manager at Dow Europe, one of the founder members of the Silage Advisory Centre created topromote the science of silage to aid farmers’ decision-making.

“Baled silage, consisting as it does of relatively small units of material, has the important characteristic of being portable. Its portability means that it is easily moved about the farm or to off-farm locations where animals are being housed temporarily. This portability also allows for the sale of surpluses.”