The article below is based on grass (clover) analyses of Farmdesk users, spread across the Netherlands and Belgium. For 2022 we had 604 reports, for 2023 we had 673 reports and for 2024 already 494 reports. This article is a sequel to the article Nice reflection of the growing season in the 2023 grass (clover) silages.
Location
Where 2022 was a dry, sunny and warm year while 2023 was a fairly normal year with a wet spell in the spring, the 2024 growing season was wet, late and rather dreary in most places except for August.
What can cows do with the 2024 grass silage? And how can we adjust?
Focus on protein
Many parcels allowed themselves to be fertilized with slurry only late or sometimes not at all. Sometimes even spreading fertilizer did not work well on low-lying plots. Some high plots did allow timely fertilization and harvesting in April and then we had a fairly high protein content.
Given the dismal nature of the weather, protein quality was only moderate. The silages that had to wait, sometimes with limited fertilization, until May and certainly June to be harvested had very low protein values. Even the second cuts then harvested after often previously problematic fertilization also showed low protein values. Both in terms of crude protein, DVE and OEB.
Only at the end of the summer did protein value and protein quality improve, but did not reach normal values for the time of year.
Focus on energy
The gloomy weather also translated into relatively low energy content of the silages. The VEM content, the sugar values and the FOS actually failed all year. Only the sugar values of the protein-poor June silage were quite high.
In fact, there was very little truly concentrate grass silage in terms of energy to harvest in the spring.
Focus on digestibility
The opposite was true for crude fiber and NDF values. These were quite high throughout the year. Probably due to the often necessary long growing periods after the good weather had delayed mowing or because the accessibility of the plots left something to be desired.
Only in autumn were silages made with relatively little crude fiber.
Impact
While we cannot lump all farms in every region of the Benelux together, we do notice clear trends in grass silage quality:
Stiff and slow digesting with relatively low protein content. The rumen bacteria will have work this winter to get everything digested! What they often miss is extra fast feed components from the grass silage. Both in terms of protein and energy. Therefore, we often see rather pale fibrous manure, where the starch sometimes even remains undigested, especially if there is relatively much resistant starch in the ration.
Solutions
Faster starch components can provide relief, but often we only see good results with extra sugar application combined with rumen available protein. For example, fodder beets together with extra rumen protein often produce nice results. If there is a shortage of rumen protein on farms, we can look for feedstuffs with fast digestible protein, but in many cases it is often sufficient to supplement realtively cheap feed urea in combination with fast energy to encourage cows to produce better milk.
With this analysis, we want to present a trend in the grass silage and possible lines of thought regarding solutions. Obviously, the corresponding remedy does not apply to all farms in every region and it will always be a question of correctly identifying the farm's own feedstuffs and using the necessary knowledge to fit them into the winter ration, to which suitable corrective feedstuffs will have to be added with a view to achieving a balanced ration and corresponding high productivity while keeping the cows healthy.
