Dependable forage analysis, whatever the weather: navigating challenges to make informed decisions
Sciantec
Agriculture
As weather patterns continue to fluctuate as a result of climate change, farmers are facing unprecedented challenges in crop production. According to Farmers Guardian (2024), some crops, such as grass, have declined by up to 28% due to adverse weather conditions including record rainfall over the last 18 months. Washed-out seeds, standing water, and thin crops are just a few of the consequences farmers are currently experiencing, making it difficult to maintain their fields effectively.
These issues are spilling over into fresh grass forage, which makes making effective decisions on livestock nutrition more challenging. Read on to find out more about why you should test your forages and silages, why analysis is more important than ever this year, what decisions analysis will help you make, and how Sciantec can help.
Why test forages and silages?
By analysing forage, you can gain valuable insights into the nutrient content and quality of what you choose to feed your animals, which is essential for maintaining healthy and productive livestock. Forages and silages with poor nutritional value and low yields can significantly impact livestock performance.
Forage quality is defined by digestibility and nutrient content. The higher they are, the better the quality of the forage. This greatly impacts productivity and animal welfare in livestock. For example, including high-quality fresh forage in dairy cows’ diets increases milk production.
Being aware of the nutritional value of the forage your animals are eating and utilising it effectively is essential to not only help reduce the incidence of nutrition-related diseases such as sub-acute ruminal acidosis (SARA) or grass staggers (caused by magnesium deficiency), but also to help you plan and optimise animal nutrition. Forage analysis undertaken by an accredited laboratory like Sciantec will give you vital information about nutrient levels, including proteins and sugars, enabling you to adjust your feeding strategies accordingly. This ensures that cows and other livestock animals receive the proper nutrition they need for optimal health and productivity.
Why is forage analysis more important than ever this year?
It has been an extremely wet 18 months in England. The Met Office states that 1,695.9mm of rain fell from October 2022 to March 2024, the highest amount seen since 1836.
Excessive rainfall has led to wildly varying conditions across the country, meaning that many fields lay saturated and even flooded, affecting crop growth and quality. You may not be able to get your tractors onto the ground to fertilise or work it effectively, meaning that you won’t get the growth rates, sugars, or nutrient levels required for optimal crop production. By analysing fresh grass forage, you can identify any disparities in nutrient content across your fields and make necessary adjustments to your management practices.
In fact, grassland farmers are being urged to focus on attaining between 28 to 33% dry matter (DM) content when they ensile grass. Forage industry experts expect that the first cuts of silage this season are likely to be high in fibre and lignin and low in DM and sugars, and contamination is likely due to wet ground conditions. This all means that making quality silage will be challenging. Ensuring optimal DM levels is vital for good fermentation, helping to mitigate some of the weather-related challenges this year has brought. Ultimately, testing silage to check nutrient and DM levels will help you plan your livestock nutrition plans even more effectively for optimal animal welfare and productivity.
The impact of weather-related challenges extends beyond crop production: it also affects feed prices. As crop yields decline, the scarcity of certain crops, such as wheat, can lead to increased market prices. This, in turn, affects livestock feed prices and farmers’ margins, making it increasingly challenging to balance profitability. Checking the nutritional value of available forages and silages using analysis will help you optimise your feed formulations by identifying nutrient deficiencies and adjusting diets accordingly. This not only ensures the health and well-being of your livestock, but also helps mitigate the financial impacts of fluctuating feed prices.
In light of these challenges, timely forage analysis is crucial to help you make informed decisions about your cropping and feeding strategies. Our insightful results enable crop nutrition and fertiliser programmes to be tailored to help provide the highest quality forage available. With a delayed harvest on the horizon and uncertainties surrounding crop quality, booking forage tests to check nutrient levels ensures that you will have all the necessary information you need to plan accordingly.
Send in your forage samples today for dependable livestock nutrition planning
With over 30 years’ expertise in animal feed analysis and our extensive experience in the agriculture sector, Sciantec carries out reliable, accurate nutritional analysis of forage samples by NIR. For more information or to book, contact us.
References
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/10/uk-food-production-down-record-rainfall-farmers
AgriTrade News, issue 16.
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