As Gary wrote in our last blog, measuring and assessing the amount of fodder available to you this winter is absolutely vital. So far for most of us, the autumn is giving the chance of gathering more forage for the winter. However, as the chart below shows, all across the British Isles, there are still many places that are on the knife edge of drought and are having difficulties growing forage and grazing cattle at the moment. What I want to focus on in this blog is the impact of the drought on the mineral composition of the forages for next winter.
United Kingdom drought severity index (August)and Met Eireann soil moisture deficit (29th August)
Plants get their nutrients from the soil to their roots in 3 major ways,
Water plays a vital part in the flow of nutrients in the soil to the plant. It is also vital for the flow of nutrients inside the plant itself. The process is called transpiration. A plant takes up water through its roots, it moves up the plant through the xylem and is lost through the stomata on the leaves. This creates a slight pressure differential to suck water from the soil. Approximately 96% of the water a plant takes up is lost to the atmosphere, only 4 % is used by the plant. The other 96% is used to transport nutrients around the plant.
This process can be shut done in very hot weather like we received this year, as the plant senses that it is losing too much water and closes its stomata on the leaf. The upshot of this is that if a plant is not moving water through itself, its not bringing nutrient into itself either. It sits there dormant, waiting for the drought to pass.
What I think is that this year, we have to be vigilant for -forages that are lacking in nutrients and protein. Every farm will be different and there will be variation from region to region and farm to farm. This is the year to make sure you get a forage test on all your forages and particularly those made in the drought or after the drought. Some of the issues that I expect to see are;
Trace elements are likely to be lower than normal. The reason for this is luxury consumption again, this time for nitrogen. Nitrogen is antagonistic to the plant taking up trace elements (zinc, manganese, copper etc.). Plants will keep taking up nitrogen as they need in much larger quantities to grow than trace elements. Although they need the trace elements too, they need them in times 1000 less than nitrogen. The impact of the drought, combined with luxury consumption of nitrogen means there is a big chance that forages will analyse lower for trace elements this year. Theseh will have to be supplemented in the winter diet for the health of the animals eating those forages.
Lastly, I would like to talk about maize and whole crop silage. A lot of farmers will be using these types of forages for the first time this year and might not have experience of them. As we can see from the table, these crops are traditionally lower in minerals and trace elements than grass forages. This effect will be greater than ever this year.
These are some of the reasons why testing your winter forages is vital this year. If you have any questions. Please get in touch with us here at Devenish, and you can talk to one of our nutritionists on the best way to take forages samples from pits of bales. Get your forages sampled and start to plan your winter-feeding programme now.
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