The benefits of red clover silage

On this week’s episode of the Dairy Edge podcast, Nicky Byrne, Research Officer in Teagasc Grange, discusses the benefits of red clover silage.

Nicky explains that red clover has a huge potential to fix nitrogen and dramatically lower the chemical nitrogen input for silage. With yields of 25-26 bales per year, it is producing a significant amount of forage with no chemical nitrogen input.

However, red clover silage may not be for every field, and management of it will be critical to maximising its lifespan. It is ideally suited to outblocks that might not be grazed at all or only grazed in the later part of the year. 

Operations such as grazing or cutting need to take place in good conditions to maximise the lifespan of the clover so for this reason, Nicky would recommend that only a portion of the block is in red clover at any one time in situations where outblocks are providing grazing in the later part of the year. This will allow for grazing of the red clover sward in good conditions with normal grass swards being more resilient for grazing in poorer weather conditions.

Cutting date is very important with early May being the target for the 1st cut and subsequent cuts being taken at 6-8 week intervals. Ideally the third cut should be completed in late August/early September while there is a better chance of fine weather to allow for wilting hence the early 1st cut date is important to achieve this objective.

Nicky finishes by saying that he would see a proportion of silage ground in red clover as being of benefit to dairy farmers to produce high quality forage to feed back to cows during the shoulders or during weather challenges as intakes on it are good and it may contribute to increased performance as a result of this based on his work in the dairy beef systems trial. 

An ideal scenario in Nicky’s opinion is that farmers would start a 10 year reseeding programme incorporating red clover into it where appropriate, with the expectation of a 4-6 year lifespan of the red clover, with the sward reverting to a normal two cut silage scenario subsequently until reseeded again after the 10 year cycle.

For more episodes from the Dairy Edge podcast go to the show page at: 

https://www.teagasc.ie/animals/dairy/the-dairy-edge-podcast/

The Dairy Edge is a co-production with LastCastMedia.com