pea and oats

[Coldbrook]

Running low on forage for the winter, I have a field of pea and oats which was planned to be combined but could I do it into whole crop silage for the dairy herd?

 

[Nithsdale]

Yes, farm near me does it (but bales and wraps it). Makes a very good feed - they give it to beef calves. I'd imagine it'd be good for dairy?..

 

[Derrick Hughes]

Is it not to mature now

 

[Agrivator]

Whole crop usually has a very low ME, simply because it is almost 50% fibre. And at this time of year, it might need an additive to prevent the pea silage ending up as shiite.

 

[AndrewM]

would have thought its too mature to turn into whole crop now. combine the grain and bruise for feed, keep the straw if you can use it in a mix to bulk out something else. done peas and oats as wholecrop bales, but when it was green and oats still soft. too late and they all fall out on the floor when mown

 

[Flatlander]

Oats should be in milk stage for best mix of protein and bulk. Very common here to gave whole crop for silage. If cut later with a mower. The conditioning system will cause grain loss. If it’s enough acres get it cut with a header into a forager and clamped. Concrete walls are a must as rats are a major issue in whole crop silage. Bales even more so from birds too.

 

[Coldbrook]

the oat grain is hard, won't the forage header crack it? does it need to be cracked? fed whole oats to calves and worked fine but unsure about milking cows.

 

[ploughman1963]

Our nutritionist crunched the numbers once - cows will digest a percentage of whole oats but some come through in the muck undigested - the calculation was is it cost effective to roll the oats rather than accept a %age going undigested. The result was that the gain was marginal so I would say you could wholecrop but I would only clamp it not put it in bales. If the harvester has a mill fitted then you will get a good proportion of grains crushed anyway?

 

[Derrick Hughes]

the oat grain is hard, won't the forage header crack it? does it need to be cracked? fed whole oats to calves and worked fine but unsure about milking cows.

If it's that hard you will have grain and straw , may as well combine it , they idea of wholcrop is to cut at a younger stage so there is more feed value in the stem and it's far more digestible than straw

 

[Nithsdale]

We did a field of barley (mowed and baled) in 2012 - that bloody wet year!! It was getting on mid September. Couldn't get dry weather to combine it and far too much grass in the bottom to dry even when there was a break in the rain. It was past doing but we didn't have much choice.

Lost quite a lot of grain going through the baler (chopped) but the young stock we fed it to still did tremendous on it. You could see some whole grain in their dung but not as much as we expected