Herd Management: Feeding autumn-calvers for fertility

Many pits are so dry that even the sharpest shear grabs are finding it difficult to cut a clean face resulting in a larger surface area and the potential for spoilage, writes independent ruminant nutritionist Brian Reidy.

With the cost of fertiliser, you can grow much better value energy per unit of N with maize than you can with grass silage.

On my visits to autumn-calving farms over the last few weeks, in general, cows are milking well apart from where poor silage has been produced and no second forage is available.

Some had intended to feed lower levels of maize silage until January but had no choice but to up levels of it as cows were not firing on grass silage-based diets no matter how much meal was being fed.