In recent weeks most livestock farmers have been able to make bales of grass silage as grass growth has been excellent for the previous six weeks under ideal conditions. During the last two weeks of September weather conditions were quite good and weather conditions during first week of October was also good.

According to Sean O’Connor General Manager for Silotite in Ireland during this three week period the trade sold as much balewrap as they did during a normal July and August. The weather earlier in the year was also exceptionally dry so baled silage on a dry matter (DM) basis ranged from 30 t0 35% compared with 25% for an average year.

In a normal year around 16 million bales of grass silage is made so taking into account the higher DM bales made earlier in the season the available silage on a DM basis must now be close to 2017 levels. A large quality of excellent hay has also been made and the price of straw in Britain has fallen do this is all good news for livestock farmers.

Forage brassicas are a cost effective winter feed and have been sown by many livestock and tillage farmers this year to increase feed availability and – therefore – helping stretch existing silage stocks and reducing the requirement for bought-in feeds.

A total of 1,701 applications were made to the Dept. of Agriculture under the Fodder Production Incentive Measure. The scheme was introduced in August to encourage tillage farmers to sow forage crops on their land, to reduce the feed deficit in the country.

A total of 6,000ha of grasses have been sown – including Westerwold ryegrass and Italian ryegrass. A total of 19,400ha were planted under the incentive and the average area sown was 10.46ha.

595 farmers opted to sow grass crops, while 1,255 farmers planted brassica crops – some sowed both. Co. Cork saw the largest area of grasses planted under the incentive, as farmers there planted 1,191ha. Kilkenny & Wexford had 723 ha and 715 ha planted respectively.

Aside from strip grazing livestock farmers are using zero grazing and even baling some brassica crops for winter feed.

According to the June CSO (Central Statistics Office) data livestock numbers have not increased to any significant extent and undoubtedly due to the forage crisis many dairy farmers have culled more surplus cows.

According to Bord Bia's beef and livestock manager, Joe Burke over the course of 2018 to date about 15% to 20% extra cows are being killed over and above last year’s levels
Last June according to provisional data from the CSO the total number of sheep was 5,105,500 a decrease of 91,600 (-1.8%) on June 2017. The June 2018 results also show that total cattle numbers were down by 15,000 (-0.2%) to 7,348,500 while the number of dairy cows was up by 48,200 (+3.4%).

However other cows dropped by 33,100 (-3.1%).The total number of cattle 2 years and over increased by 23,700 (+3.0%), while cattle under 1 year decreased by 52,600 (-2.5%).