What to grow as a complete suckler cow ration?

JCB_JCR

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Somerset
We buy cheap hay, or silage, or make rough silage tidying up odd bits of land we have or that appears. Feed this to dry suckler cows plus they clear up what rest of herd don't eat in morning (not much). Saves the good silage for autumn calves and fats.

Got a (failed!) AB8: Flower-rich margins and plots mix under CS in which hoping can bale for feeding to dry cows.
 

beefandsleep

Member
Location
Staffordshire
I have a feed wagon I use for feeding stores and finishers. I don’t use it for the cows, chopping straw and mixing silage uses up far too much fuel and tractor hours for those buggers. I put a bale of silage or hay, whatever I have really. They usually get whatever I don’t consider good enough for growing or finishing stock. When they’ve eaten that they get a bale of straw, when that’s gone another bale of silage. I just drop it in front of the barrier and push it up till it’s gone. Loose minerals in half a barrel tied to the feed barrier. For a treat they get to pick through what the other cattle have left when I clean troughs out. I think they’re spoilt.
 

Cowgirl

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Ayrshire
Sorry I tried to explain (badly) that I don’t want higher protein but when I add rolled oats just before calving they will bring the level down as they’re only 11% so will bring the level back up with soya/rapemeal.
Ah I see. It’s quite hard to find protein requirements for dry cows in the literature but I always thought it was about 9-11%, unless they are growing heifers. Can anyone confirm this?
 

Dog Bowl

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Cotswolds
My cows are on stemmy ryegrass, baled as a second cut when cows are housed and dry. Once we start calving they move onto a diet of really good grass clamp silage fed out on top of a couple of bales of the stemmy ryegrass haylage. Minerals top dressed. My cows are probably too well done in comparison to others but they look well and I've had no issues before. All rearing stock and fat cattle are fed on multicut grass silage and barley wholecrop. This whole system works for me. No concentrates bought at all, everything now done from forage.
 

Old Spot

Member
Location
Glos
I wholecropped winter barley this time about 50% of my winter feed bulky and fibrous, I think it’s a good feed. Cattle fit not fat. I planted oats/barley/sunflowers/vetches after, grazed mid September and then into WW.
i think W oats wholecropped would work well.
i cut on the 10th of June, grass as well one cut for silage, second cut hay.
normally I feed straw as part of cow ration, but not this year
 

JohnAC

Member
Livestock Farmer
We give our cows the worst quality silage we have ad-lib when housed and start and give them half a kilo of of soya and 150grams of pre Calver minerals for six weeks before calving the soya definitely seems to help colostrum quality and quantity
 

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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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