Prepare for Winter Diets with Silage Analysis
With the bulk of silages safely clamped and/or baled, now is the time to analyse their nutritional content and prepare diets ready for this forthcoming winter period.
Forages form the backbone to most ruminant diets and understanding what nutritional values they offer helps to establish what else is required in the diet to maximise animal performance.
Spring 2020 has been a challenging season with a sustained wet winter preluding a hot, dry and sunny spring. Among many other factors, these weather events will impact how the crop performs nutritionally. This article briefly analyses this years weather data and suggests how forage nutritional values may have been affected.
Rainfall
Rainfall data taken from the Bartholomews site at Chichester increased above the 22-year average from October 2019 and was sustained through February 2020.
April 2020 however recorded near record lows with only a slight increase in May.
In comparison, this graph shows monthly rainfall data taken from the Met Office for South-East and South-Central England.
This graph, although shows a similar trend to that at Chichester, demonstrates how local variations in weather can occur. This is most notable in September 2019 and April 2020 where Chichester recorded less rainfall than the South regional area.
Potential Nutritional Impact
As low rainfall hinders growth, proteins may be reduced as the plant struggles to rebuild itself
Water is crucial for photosynthesis, therefore sugar production will be impacted
Drought conditions can induce stress which may cause a premature focus on stem growth, resulting in more indigestible fibre content
Sunlight Hours & Temperature
Monthly sunlight hour data taken from the Met Office for South-East and South-Central England shows that from February through to June, hours of sunlight were at record highs.
This correlates with the lack of rain, and thus reduced cloud cover, shown in the previous graphs.
Met Office mean temperatures for the same southern region although have not matched maximum levels recorded throughout the 101-year period, Spring 2020 has consistently recorded above average temperatures.
Potential nutritional impact
Longer hours of sunlight provide more solar energy for photosynthesis which will support sugar (glucose) production
Higher than average temperatures may suggest higher dry matter silages which can impact silage stability and induce secondary fermentation
Legume species (clover) require warmer temperatures to break winter dormancy, thus if present at time of harvest may enhance protein levels
Although temperature and sunlight have been favourable, rainfall has been the limiting factor this spring which would have negatively impacted the plants ability to photosynthesise and grow.
To eliminate speculation, it is highly recommended to analyse silages for their nutritional values. This removes all sense of doubt and enables an accurate diet to be formulated to achieve animal performance and production targets this winter.
To arrange for your silages to be analysed please contact your local feed specialist.