Roughage tour Grass - Week 21
Quality of first cut on trunk in danger?
The changeable weather will most likely cause many dairy farmers to harvest the first cut in June. What effect does this have on the quality of the grass and where can the dairy farmer make adjustments where necessary?
A wet month of May is almost behind us and the prospects are favourable. Surviving 1 more rainy day to move towards a sunny end of the month of May. This gives a number of dairy farmers the opportunity to make the first cut. Within the Boerenbusiness Roughage Tour is that the most Brabant dairy farmer Hans Schoenmakers from Udenhout.
Heavy first cut ahead
The Brabant dairy farmer must have an average mowing cut of around 5000 kilos. ''It remains to be seen whether I did the right thing to wait with mowing the first cut, but as long as the VEM result in the silage sample starts with a 9, I am satisfied.'' Schoenmakers does not dare to take it to take a gamble with these barrels. "If I guess wrong, I'll end up with a big lump of junk, then I'd rather have coarser material and the certainty of a good quality silage."
The advice for ensiling the first cut is towards a dry matter percentage of 40%. ''There are a lot of rumors that the stemmed first cut should be ensiled with more than 40% moisture, but that is not the case. The first cut can still handle the 40% just fine, and this stemmed cut doesn't need to be any more moist'', says Antoon Verhoeven, roughage specialist in the Southwest Netherlands of Limagrain.
Nutritional values are declining
With the heat ahead and the shoot-through date of the perennial ryegrass included, the quality could drop sharply by the end of the week. Flowering starts and the first cut gets more stem, so there is a good chance that the VEM of the fresh grass will be below 1000.
In recent weeks there has been an extreme decrease in the sugar content from more than 250 in week 18 to 150 in week 21. On the other hand, the crude protein content reacts positively to this decrease, so that the average crude protein content now amounts to 215. ''Due to the significant drop in sugar content, fewer sugars are available for preservation. An silage agent to make this process more favorable and faster can turn out well'', adds Verhoeven.
Erik van der Deure
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