Catch milk price premiums

Dairy farmers can capitalise on late summer milk price seasonality premiums through the tactical use of alternative forage crops. But crops need to be sown now if the grazing season is to be extended profitably into late August, September and the early autumn.

"Brassica catch crops like kale and forage rape can provide a valuable source of energy and protein to supplement late summer grazing when grass quantity and quality is tailing off," says Michael Shannon from fodder crop specialists British Seed Houses.

"Thanks to its vigorous early growth, a good kale variety like Maris Kestrel provides an excellent late summer/early autumn feed for dairy cows. Maris Kestrel is an exceptionally leafy, hybrid variety with short stems that has been bred for low stem fibre and high digestibility."

Michael Shannon also points out that Maris Kestrel kale is resistant to lodging, has good winter hardiness and is a highly flexible, easy to manage forage that can be strip or zero grazed, and ensiled in big bales.

"Kale can be sown up until the middle of July and will yield between eight and 10 tonnes per hectare of dry matter at around two thirds the cost of silage. ME value is respectable at between 10 and 11 MJ/kg dry matter and protein content is also good," he says.

For producers wanting a higher protein fodder crop, Michael Shannon suggests forage rape. At around 19-20% crude protein, forage rape has the highest protein yield of any of the alternative fodder crops and varieties like Stego can be sown right up until August and still produce a grazing crop for the autumn.

"Stego is an extremely high yielding forage rape with excellent disease resistance. It also has extremely digestible stems, which allows the cow to utilise the whole plant. So not only does this allow producer to increase stocking rates when strip grazing, it also minimises the residual green matter that needs to be ploughed in the following season," he says.