red clover

How do you store the oats over the winter, to keep it vermin proof.

Slowly thinking on trying a field of oats next year

You would want to be careful with the shed rate. The clover would be grand it's the grass that could get smothered. Oats has less of an effect than barley. 15 kg/ acre at the most.

Any RC silage coming fit to cut the next few weeks?

When let grow strong can the grass smother and kill the clover?

Oats isn’t the best partner in a mix due to Allelopathy. Perennial ryegrass isn’t a great partner either due to its growth pattern. If you absolutely must have a mix with red clover use an Italian ryegrass at not more than 7kg/ha, preferably around 4kg. I can’t see any benefit in including a cereal if including Italian ryegrass. I hate ryegrass. Cereal rye is sooo much better.

Did I mention that I hate ryegrass.

I would not use Italian ryegrass as it will only last three years at the very most. I really question the economics of a crop you need to resow every 3 years.

I grew hybrid ryegrass and red clover and I be reluctant to go back to that. You have to cut at least three times or maybe four times. You cannot graze before closing and neither can you graze in the autumn. It's just adding cost into a system. Another problem was having to cut before your normal first cut and often ending up with low DM bales

Dose it suffer from club root. A seed sales man said you cannot continually replant the same field witn RC as it develops clubroot

If you only had clover in the sward I'd say you'd have a very light crop after a bit of a wilt. Isn't the idea the clover fixes nitrogen to grow the grass in the sward?

No it doesn’t suffer from clubroot. Clubroot is a disease of brassicas. Was the salesman’s name Phil by any chance? Lol.

It does however suffer from Sclerotinia Trifolium which is similar to Sclerotinia stem rot in OSR. My land is poisoned with it now because I pushed hard with clovers…often intercropped dry season and wet season clovers on the same land continuously for 10yrs. Something had to give.

While on the subject, I’ve seen Irish lads posting the seed labels of MSS that they were planting on Twitter, and dry season clovers were included. Please be careful lads when ye’re planting these ‘miracle’ swards. Dry season clovers have NO place in Irish swards. I can only presume that someone stands to make a handy few quid selling the miracle to unknowing souls.

You lose economy of scale. To do a mixed system you would need 150+ acres. It's not really viable on sub 100 acres.

Rye is a very expensive seed in Ireland. I used it about 10+ years ago and it was 50% dearer than oats.

Most lads in Ireland want a composite feed. Protein is not the be all and end all. Ya if you are complementing it with a grain yes. On a cheap grassland system it's hard to beat straight grass silage

I just cannot see using a plant that has to be replanted every 3-4 years making much of a saving. Replanting means you lose one cut in that year. If you let it run into four years the crop tends to be very poor.

I have perennial ryegrass swards for silage that are 6-10years old and still cropping ok. If I need to rejuvenate them I can sitch in 8kgs of seed after the second cut and keep it grazed tight.

A lot of middling farmers (like myself) overseeds the silage fields with a few bags of Italian. Fields with drains and rocks and boggy patches and it works away fine. I think myself, Italian is very underrated, you will have a nice cut every six weeks.

I work on the assumption that beef is not compatible with cost. I can manage with a two cut silage system. One in late May and I cut second cut this week. Probably a week to 10 earlier that I would have preferred, however Galway races next week and it can be hard to get a contractor. Getting rain tonight so I was spreading ordinary Urea on it today and a coolant hose burst on the tractor. I had 18-6-12 to go on it as well so will fix it tomorrow and spread away.

I averaged 13.5 bales per acre over the two cuts. Silage is 40%+DM and probably early 70's DMD. It's costing about 35-36/ bale.

Second cut was 5 bales per acre cut with mower conditioner 4 pm on Tuesday, raked early Thursday and baled at 5pm on Thursday. First cut was cut last week in May. Super stuff.

First still got similar treatment. Both got an additive. Cattle came out in super condition last spring and I class this year's silage as better.

Yes, especially if it’s damp. They go stone mad for it. I certainly wouldn’t do that. Anyhow if you didn’t kill a lash of them, the objective is surely to minimize buying expensive meal from the Coop, and create your own balanced feed produced on your own farm?

Saying that I’ve fed it to young stock as baled silage alternated with some kind of gutfill. Not ideal.

I think that a little bit of clarification is needed. For the sake of clarity shall we call red clover…’Maize’. OK?

RC is a forage crop just like maize. You don’t get into an argument that maize is SH1T for grazing at the shoulders and is a waste of time, no? Because we all know that maize is not for grazing.

Before someone chips in that they ran xxxx over ‘Maize’ in the shoulders, that’s fine too, but could posters please compare apples with apples?

There are heaps of different clovers out there, ‘Maize’ happens to be just one. Did Teagasc trial it and give it the nod for gov to fire a grant at it, or what? There are heaps of options out there. All those options need to be extensively trialed in replicated plots all around the country. That’s Teagascs job. But picking one variety and encouraging farmers to grow it by way of grant aid, without educating the farmers is absolutely ludicrous.

All clovers need a special type of agronomy that can’t be got from a bag….I’ll leave that to @SayMyName