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Provita are encouraging farmers to test the effects of their silage inoculant on their own farm.

With current prices many farmers will be asking the questions of every ingredient supplier do I need this, will it work and what benefit if any will it give me.

With silage inoculants it can be difficult to see the promised benefits on farm as each year, cut, field and farm is different.

One of the ways these questions can be answered is by farmers themselves making their own mini-silo tests. These can be used to assess treated verses untreated or one brand verses another.

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At this time of the year many farmers are bombarded with information on silage inoculants. Many products claim to be better that the next one, so how can actually they be compared? With so much variation between years and cuts, it’s very difficult to compare silage inoculants or even treated verses untreated crops.

The first thing to check is, are the bacterial strains in the silage inoculant approved within the EU as a feed additive? This EU registration system has set of standard parameters to measure efficacy such as dry matter losses, pH, lactic acid and ammonia plus stability for wholecrop and maize silages.

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The flock name Springhill is synonymous with the highest standards of pedigree Texel and Charollais sheep breeding. The Foster family – John, his wife Helga plus sons Graham and Robbie in tandem with daughter Alice – run a 320 strong ewe flock along with a 240-cow dairy herd near Ardstraw in North Co Tyrone.

“The Texel flock comprises 100 ewes,” John explained.

“All are crossed with pedigree Texel tips with 15 ewes flushed annually to produce embryos. In tandem with this we run a pedigree Charollais flock of 30 purebred ewes. Half of these are crossed with elite Charollais tips. The remainder are served on a 1:1 basis with Texel and Beltex rams. There is a growing demand within the lowland sheep sector for high quality crossbred Charollais tip with the capability of producing elite lambs having high levels of crossbred vigour.

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There is tremendous scope to increase both lamb output and overall sheep performance and efficiency, according to Provita’s Tommy Armstrong

“The results of research on ewe lifetime performance, shortly to be released in the Republic of Ireland by Teagasc, will throw new light on how best to increase the performance levels achieved by the lowland sheep sector.

“Fundamentally, there are a number of key factors which impact on flock output. These include ewe prolificacy and longevity, nutrition of the pregnant ewe and grassland management.

“But the scope to improve sheepmeat output is already obvious. Currently, performance figures from many lowland sheep farms confirm a weaning rate of 1.25 lambs per ewe served. This compares with scanning rates of 1.75 to 1.9 lambs per ewe ”

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Diarrhoea (scours) is the most common disease problem in the young unweaned calf. It is estimated that it affects in varying degrees over a third of all calves during their rearing period and is responsible for about half of all British calf deaths. Problems arise in all types of cattle husbandry systems (MDC & NADIS).

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Give your stock the mineral and vitamin boost they need now

Boosting essential minerals and vitamins in ewes pre-lambing will have a benefit for ewes and the benefit will be also passed onto lambs.

Most sources of minerals and vitamins sources are only designed to provide daily dose levels. However to correct deficiencies and boost performance certain minerals and vitamin need to be given at much higher levels.

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