The silage and hay season, or silly season as many like to call it in the southwest, is upon us. There has been a flurry of activity on dairy and beef properties in recent weeks, with farmers dodging the weather; gearing up tractors, mowers and balers; and choosing the right days to cut and bale pasture for feeding over summer and autumn.
This often means many late nights and tired producers, as the window to make good hay and silage, that will have the right nutritional value for feeding their herds, is short. It is regularly a juggle between quantity and quality, as you very rarely get both when conserving pasture.
The pasture predominantly conserved in the southwest is annual ryegrass. There are many different varieties on the market, and producers will choose what’s best for their systems. That might be a late flowering diploid variety, or an early flowering tetraploid variety. Whichever the choice, they all have one thing in common – stage of maturity. As soon as the ryegrass plant puts up a seed head, the quality of the feed drastically declines.
When ryegrass is maintained in its actively growing state, producing leaves only, it has the highest amount of crude protein and metabolizable energy stored in the leaves, with the least amount of neutral detergent fibre (NDF). However, once it turns reproductive, and begins to grow a seed head, the amount of NDF in the plant rises, and therefore energy and protein reduce. Hay and silage made from ryegrass swards with a high seed head content will be lower quality, and not as palatable for livestock.
If producers are intending to make hay or silage for cattle to gain weight or produce milk on, it needs to be of high nutritional value, and not high in NDF. This is where the juggle comes in, as cutting pasture in its actively growing stage will ultimately lead to a lighter cut, meaning less hay or silage is grown and conserved. It will, however, mean that the conserved forage will be of higher quality and result in greater milk yield, or weight gains, for livestock that it is fed to.
It is impossible to make high quality silage from poor quality pasture, no matter how well it is harvested and wrapped. The fermentation process of silage, when done properly, will ensure that silage has similar quality to the grass it was made from, but it will not improve the quality of the grass. In some cases, it maybe best to make better quality hay than poor quality silage, as silage will always require higher input costs than hay, and can be of similar quality.
Whilst it is often comforting to have a shed stacked to the roof with rolls of hay or silage coming into summer, making both hay and silage is costly. Producers need to make sure they get the best bang for their buck. Making the highest quality conserved feed you can, will ultimately lead to better production from your herd – be that meat or milk.
There are some great resources available for producers who are conserving fodder. A good one to check out is the Top Fodder manual, which can be found here: https://www.dairyaustralia.com.au/feed-and-nutrition/growing-feed-for-the-herd/making-silage#.Y1gnkXZByUk
