2019 Silage Season

Why we bother with maize? Indeed, on paper it probably doesn't stack up. Those farms where the farmer is a suspected minion of the Kite Kid re-inforce that too. But there's more to it than just the stats and figures. There's a certain pride to a good crop of maize. The rotation aspect, and ability to add a lot of organic matter back to the soil; the reaction from the cows when they get a bit added to their feed soon after harvest, and the way it makes them eager to come in high summer when they get a little snack of maize silage for supper on the way in.

Nah, it wouldn't be a good idea to make maize a large portion of the ration here in a good grass growing area... but I wouldn't like to do without it. Same with wholecrop, for other reasons. Grass is great, but there's a hell of a lot of other things a cow likes to eat when she's had enough grass. Maize just seems to be like chocolate or ice cream, but for cows.

Also consider that many people manage to get a first cut of grass off, then get the maize in, and might even follow the maize with a winter cereal or re-seed.

Pride in a a crop of maize.... add a lot of organic matter to a field.. come on now, these are claims which are stretching it a bit and then some. A lot of maize land I can point you at is treated like a winter dumping ground for slurry and FYM and cropped intensively as sin with the stuff, too.

Yes cows like it but you can buy in ground maize which will perk the milk up from the docks.
 

dowcow

Member
Location
Lancashire
Pride in a a crop of maize.... add a lot of organic matter to a field.. come on now, these are claims which are stretching it a bit and then some. A lot of maize land I can point you at is treated like a winter dumping ground for slurry and FYM and cropped intensively as sin with the stuff, too.

Yes cows like it but you can buy in ground maize which will perk the milk up from the docks.

Intensive cropping - I assume you mean maize after maize after maize... and slurry dumping ground: Two things we don't do here. Actually I resent a little the people that do this sort of thing as it brings down legislation from above that the rest of us have to adhere to when it wouldn't be necessary if some people hadn't abused their (often) rented maize ground like this. I've seen fields get screwed by continuous maize, and yet people still do it. And then you end up with landlords that say "No maize" after they've seen what other people have done to their maize fields.

Yes you can just buy it in, but then I would just be paying someone to do a task which actually I quite like doing myself. I find it rewarding, prepping the fields and trying to do a job as best I can at it. And yeah, that's the pride in maize. Every crop I see all summer long I look at it over the hedge and rate it against my own. It tells me mostly I'm doing something right. I am happy to not have to rely on others to do what I can do myself, for as much and as many of the inputs as is possible.
 

andrew830

Member
Intensive cropping - I assume you mean maize after maize after maize... and slurry dumping ground: Two things we don't do here. Actually I resent a little the people that do this sort of thing as it brings down legislation from above that the rest of us have to adhere to when it wouldn't be necessary if some people hadn't abused their (often) rented maize ground like this. I've seen fields get screwed by continuous maize, and yet people still do it. And then you end up with landlords that say "No maize" after they've seen what other people have done to their maize fields.

Yes you can just buy it in, but then I would just be paying someone to do a task which actually I quite like doing myself. I find it rewarding, prepping the fields and trying to do a job as best I can at it. And yeah, that's the pride in maize. Every crop I see all summer long I look at it over the hedge and rate it against my own. It tells me mostly I'm doing something right. I am happy to not have to rely on others to do what I can do myself, for as much and as many of the inputs as is possible.
The thing with maize is you only have to cut it once unlike grass which could be 5 or 6 times,maize seems to be more consistent than grass.there is a big difference between first cut and fith cut.
 

dowcow

Member
Location
Lancashire
I saw an ahdb article costing maize @£117/ton DM and multicut silage @£143/ton DM

There's too many variables though. Even though we grow maize here, we are on the north-west coast and it is simple to grow many cuts of good grass as we have almost guaranteed rain during the summer. Indeed a bad autumn can ruin a crop of maize and even make it impossible or damn near impossible to harvest it without doing damage to the field which will cost extra time to sort out.

I imagine further south it will be much easier to rely on a good early bulky maize harvest and the grass crops will often yield lower during our peak months.
 

pappuller

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
M6 Hard shoulder
There's too many variables though. Even though we grow maize here, we are on the north-west coast and it is simple to grow many cuts of good grass as we have almost guaranteed rain during the summer. Indeed a bad autumn can ruin a crop of maize and even make it impossible or damn near impossible to harvest it without doing damage to the field which will cost extra time to sort out.

I imagine further south it will be much easier to rely on a good early bulky maize harvest and the grass crops will often yield lower during our peak months.
Yes 100% agree with that we are on an excellent maize growing farm but it's only the 2nd year in 30 that we've actually grown it here, always been all grass
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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    Votes: 30 16.5%
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  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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