Maximising Profit from Home Grown Forage Crops

With the ideal climate for growing grass and other forage crops, forage crops are a fundamental part of UK livestock production. Our new Forage4Profit campaign covers all the key areas that should be taken into consideration to produce forage in a profitable manner.

When done well, home-grown forage crops can have a huge impact on the profitability of a farm in all three ruminant sectors – dairy, beef and sheep.

The average milk from forage figures from Kingshay, stated as being 2,900 litres, can be deceptive – as there’s a huge variation across UK dairy farms.

For every 1,000 litres of milk produced from forage, 460kg is required in concentrates and so it is important to be making the most efficient use of purchased feeds and if you have got high-quality forage available, this is much easier.

Read more: 4 ways to help improve milk from forage

Soil health is a good starting point, to maximise forage crop performance, by providing the ideal growing conditions.

Typically the biggest challenge in this area is the lack of analysis – Wynnstay undertake thousands of soil samples a year, but 75% are below target levels, however, this is a skewed statistic as people tend to only test when they have a problem.

More advanced soil analysis allows us to look at soils in much more detail. In addition to looking at the chemical analysis, it provides a robust analysis of the biological action and physical quality of the soil.

It looks at the carbon levels which is an important metric as higher carbon soils tend to have higher organic matter and therefore be more fertile.

The suggestion isn’t to undertake this across the whole farm, as it is quite expensive, but taking a small number of samples in areas where you feel improvements can be made, is a good investment.

Silage analysis is a common practice on farms and soil sampling should be too.

It’s important to flag that you cannot always solve every problem, but you can get the chemistry right. Also making changes such as not over-applying slurry, looking at drainage or even just digging a hole to look at soil structure can help optimise soil health.

Once you have tested the soil and corrected any imbalances, it is then important to get the seed selection correct.

70% of the soil in the UK is used to grow food for livestock and so often when the seed goes into the ground the end product is not the crop, it is a litre of milk or a kilo of lamb or beef.

Factors to consider when selecting seed are:

• Soil type
• Weather conditions
• End market

When it comes to growing home-grown protein, good-quality red clover leys work well as they can provide 18-19% protein – enabling cows to produce a lot of milk from this source. It’s also worth considering other protein sources such as beans and peas, however, yields can vary with these forage crops and so again it is about what is right for your farm.

Selecting a good maize variety that has high energy and high starch can be particularly important for farmers on a cheese contract.

Growing energy has been a focus for the UK for some time now, but not so much protein, as it could always be bought cheaply. However, now prices are rising, and we are looking to be more environmentally sustainable, home-grown protein is becoming more appealing.