ALLOWANCES IN SAVING WINTER FEED FOR COWS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 14, Issue 24, 12 August 1949, Page 5

ALLOWANCES IN SAVING WINTER FEED FOR COWS

(By E. R. Marryatt, Fields Instructor, Whakatane)

I have been asked by a reader of my article in last Monday’s Beacon to explain what allowances should be made in the quantity of silage and hay saved where cropping is done for supplementary feeding of the dairy cow. As this may interest quite a number of other readers I shall try to make the matter clear. With perfect grass utilisation and with crops grown specially for supplementary feed when grass growth is poor, one-sixth of an acre should be cropped for each cow and besides, half an acre of hay should be saved per cow. However, in actual practice in this district, cropping is usually incidental to pasture renewal and not directly for supplementary feeding so that the area under crop bears little direct relationship to feed requirements. “All-Grass” Methods

Under these circumstances it is better to regard the farming method as “all-grass” and where crops are used for supplementary feeding, simply to reduce the area saved for silage according to 'the crop grown. We can regard average crops in this district to be two tons of hay, six tons of silage and 30 tons of swede*s to the acre. Allowing two tons of swedes as replacing one ton of silage a farmer who grows five acres of a 30-ton crop of swedes could therefore reduce his silage crop by 75 tons or about 12 acres. Similarly for autumn feeding, three tons bf sorts could replace one ton of silage. In the winter while the cow is dry, hay can be replaced by silage or silage by hay on the basis of 21parts by weight of silage to one part by weight of hay.