This spring many chickens have come home to roost. The poor quality forage that most farmers were forced to make last summer is causing serious trouble with many farmers.
With silage samples coming in with as low as 58DMD and 8% protein this is having a very negative effect on animals body score and energy needs. Even if this in plentiful supply this will have serious financial implications over the next few months.
Firstly the loss of body condition will cost a lot of money in terms of Compound feed to get it back to where it was let alone improve it. Waiting to go out to grass to finish cattle could add up to 6 months on to their finishing time. This is time you could be spending with the next batch of animals making you more money!
It is 5 times more expensive to get back body condition rather than maintain it!
A cows milk yield for the year is set from the condition she is in calving down. If she calves down weak and thin she will not produce anywhere near her potential milk yield over the year despite heavy feeding.
So the consequences of Thin cows are as follows, they will be slower to go in calf, have more health problems and have smaller milk yields.
The emphasis has to be on feeding all animals good quality, high energy feed and here at John O’Connell Feeds we have plenty of options for all farming enterprises.
For the Dairy Farmer
We have a range of high quality Superflow Dairy nuts and rations. These have good UFL values and also high PDIE energy values.
For a step beyond this we have DairyMax18% protein with mostly Maize and other high quality, high ufl ingredients including yeast to aid digestion and feed conversion.
For those in need of High protein dairy feed we have a DairyExcel20% protein feed with mostly Maize and other ingredients such as distillers, soya, rapeseed etc. This also comes with yeast to aid digestion and feed conversion.
For the Beef Farmer
We have a high energy Beef 16% protein ration and nut with mostly Barley and other high quality ingredients. This has proven to be hugely popular this year at a competitive price.
Beef HiMaize finisher nut and ration. this finisher ration has been very popular over the years and with mostly maize and other cereals in the feed it works very well for animals on good silage.
Beef elite Finisher. A great product to finish cattle with that we are very proud of. This has an even higher level of maize and barley, it also contains yeast and a rumen buffer to aid feed conversion.
In Summary, we know the problems of energy deficits in silage are all over the country but there are solutions rather than watching your investment in time and money in the previous year fall away. We can help you minimise the body losses and get back to high performing anaimals as fast as possible. Call us on 061 355186 for more information.
