Maize silage also forms an important part of the herd’s diet and last year, Colin altered the maize variety being grown on the farm after consulting with ForFarmers Account Manager, Dave Hunt.
“We feed a mix of maize and grass silage down the barrier and top this up with Forfarmers concentrates Maxima Balance 18 fed flat rate at 4kgs/head/day in the parlour and Optima Cream 18 in the out of parlour feeders to yield,” says Colin. “The maize silage represents another key source of homegrown forage and helps us increase the amount of milk we produce from forage overall, as well as playing an important role in helping to boost the constituent values of our milk.
“After talking through maize variety options with Dave after the 2018 growing season, we decided to go for a very early maize variety for 2019 and planted Pioneer Dent 7034. I am really pleased that we made the switch, as the cows have performed well on the new variety and it seems to be much more digestable straight from harvest when used alongside our high quality, early cut grass silage. Analysis taken in November 2019 shows that our maize silage has a MELK more energy for the lactating cow value of 1080, with ME at 11.4 MJ/kg, crude protein at 87g/kg and starch at 305g/kg.”
Colin did have some concerns with regards to digestibility issues surrounding the use of early season maize, but he hasn’t had any problems with the highly digestible 7034 Pioneer Dent.
“The digestibility of the maize silage, straight from ensiling, has proved to live up to the Pioneer data presented by Dave Hunt,” concludes Colin. “The cows hit the ground running this winter, with an average daily milk yield of 39.1 litres for March 2020, compared to 34.5 litres in March 2019, and milk yield from forage up to 14 litres compared to 6 litres for the same period last year.”
Milk solids have also improved, with butterfat increasing to 4.05% or 49.0 kg/cow in March 2020, compared to 3.7% or 37.2 kg/cow in March 2019, and protein up to 38.5 kg/cow compared to 32.7 kg/cow. There have also been improvements to the cell count over the last year, further improving the health, fertility, and productivity of the farm’s cows.
“Whilst the maize and improved grass silage quality have played their part in this improvement, it’s been the attention to detail from the whole team at Lychett Minster that has really made the difference,” says Dave Hunt.
“The protein quality of the grass silage has also enabled us to reduce the protein requirements of the concentrate we feed, which has helped make cost savings in the longer-term. The figures speak for themselves: concentrate use per litre has decreased from 0.38 kg in March 2019 to 0.32 kg in March 2020 and the overall purchased feed cost/litre has also been reduced to 9.01p compared to 10.30p in March 2019,” he concludes.