Stretching the grazing season: How Tomás is cutting winter costs

Normally, Tomás would house his lowland ewes in early December. However, this year he wants to keep them out for as long as possible

Tomás O'Toole: 'Overall, the farming year has been mostly positive, with good prices for sheep and record prices reached for weanlings this year, along with generally good weather during the key times of the year, namely spring and summer.'

This week, my farm adviser and I took silage samples for analysis. Silage makes up the main component of the winter diet — the quality of silage can be affected by factors such as the cutting date, sward quality and weather at the time of ensiling. 

It is important to find out what the nutritional value of the silage you are feeding is. One of the key areas I would look at when analysing silage would be the dry matter digestibility percentage (DMD); this estimates the energy of the silage, as well as expected liveweight gains/milk yields, and aids in planning supplementation rates. The target would be to have >72 DMD%. Last year’s DMD% was roughly around 70% DMD.