Creating a fodder reserve to reduce risk to farm business

Dairy specialist Joe Patton has advice on creating a fodder reserve to reduce the risk to farm businesses in the event of future adverse weather events. Firstly, farmers need to quantify the total grass production on their farm. Following this, stocking rate should be calculated allowing 5.5 tonnes of grass should be allowed per cow.  Optimal stocking rate does not account for ay surplus or reserve within systems and therefore, a reserve must be purchased. An average reserve of 400 kg DM/cow (2 bales) in areas of low grass growth variability and 600 kg DM/cow (3 bales) in areas of high grass growth. For more information: https://www.teagasc.ie/media/website/publications/2019/Securing-a-fodder-reserve.pdf  For more episodes and information from the Dairy Edge podcast go to: https://www.teagasc.ie/animals/dairy/the-dairy-edge-podcast/