Red clover silage for cattle

[bobthefarmer]

Got offered some red clover silage just wanted to know if there is any issues for cattle like there is with sheep.

 

[Dog&stick]

Yes extra straw!

 

[Kentishfarmer]

Yes, Google bulldog or acorn calves. We learnt the hard way! If there is too much red clover in the pregnant cows diet around months 4/5 of pregnancy the iron in the red clover locks out the manganese and causes manganese deficiency in the foetus leading to calves born with short bone syndrome basically dwarfism.
Make sure the relevant clover is in the minority of the total ration

 

[AftonShepherd]

Yes, Google bulldog or acorn calves. We learnt the hard way! If there is too much red clover in the pregnant cows diet around months 4/5 of pregnancy the iron in the red clover locks out the manganese and causes manganese deficiency in the foetus leading to calves born with short bone syndrome basically dwarfism.
Make sure the relevant clover is in the minority of the total ration

Interesting. We used to have a problem with dwarf calves but the vets didn't seem overly confident of the causes. We don't feed red clover but may be other causes of deficiency. We were told to feed a bit of barley in their ration from month 5 to month 7 and it certainly seems to have worked.

 

[Global ovine]

Yes, Google bulldog or acorn calves. We learnt the hard way! If there is too much red clover in the pregnant cows diet around months 4/5 of pregnancy the iron in the red clover locks out the manganese and causes manganese deficiency in the foetus leading to calves born with short bone syndrome basically dwarfism.
Make sure the relevant clover is in the minority of the total ration

I have been told this only occurs on high iron soils, however I have no information to the contrary.

The oestrogenic effect on ewe reproduction does not occur in cattle at all.

 

[Kentishfarmer]

I dont think our soils would be considered high iron. I know it is more common in Northern Ireland than over here. From what I can tell its mainly to do with what proportion of the diet comes from red clover, we were intially told to make sure a 3rd of their diet is made up of something else. This still resulted in some cases we had to drop the silage from red clover &ryegrass sward to <50% to eliminate cases.

Got to remember as its a mineral antagonism/lock up no amount of supplementary mineral Will correct it.

Anecdotally older skinnier cows were worse effected than younger fatter ones, I theorise that they were less effective at metabolising the minerals/more susce3ptabel to the iron lock up

 

[Henery]

Fed silage that was 30% RC ….from stewardship leys, cattle did well on that and nothing else…
Pure RC might be a diff matter…. Way too much protein…..