Winter fodder gap: do the sums now with Teagasc's figures

Count your stock, count your silage, and subtract. Teagasc puts a dairy cow at 1.6 tonnes of pit silage a month and a suckler cow at 1.4 tonnes. Measure your pit in metres, multiply the volume by 0.74, and you have your supply. The gap between the two numbers is what you need to fix. Fixing it in August costs a fraction of what it costs in November.

Grass that did not grow in July is silage you will not have in January. That is the whole problem in one sentence.

Whether it applies to you is a county question, not a national one. PastureBase Ireland figures for 30 July 2026 put Connacht at 40kg of dry matter per hectare per day, and Leinster and Munster at 21. By county it is starker still: Carlow was at 13, Leitrim at 53. If you farm in Roscommon you are having an ordinary summer. If you farm in Carlow you have lost roughly a month of growth. The national coverage flattens that difference. Your own figures do not.

How do you work out a fodder budget?

Three numbers. Demand, supply, and the difference.

Step one — your demand. Teagasc's Grass Silage Stock Checker publishes tonnes of pit silage needed per animal per month:

• Dairy cow: 1.6
• Suckler cow: 1.4
• Cattle 0–1 year: 0.7
• Cattle 1–2 years: 1.3
• Cattle over 2 years: 1.3
• Ewe: 0.15

Multiply each by your stock numbers, then by the months of winter. Teagasc advises planning for a five month winter, with a further month's feed in reserve. Add a buffer of 10–20% on top for most farms.

Step two — your supply. Measure the pit in metres: length by breadth by average height. That gives cubic metres. Multiply by 0.74 to get fresh tonnes, based on silage at 22% dry matter.

For bales, multiply your bale count by 0.9 for tonne-equivalents. Teagasc treats a 220kg dry matter bale as equivalent to one tonne of pit silage.

Step three — subtract. Demand minus supply. If the answer is negative, you have a deficit, and you now know its size in tonnes rather than in worry.

Teagasc's own survey work suggests most farmers skip this. When it surveyed around 300 farms in July 2025, only 40% had completed a winter fodder budget. Its guidance is that 75% of next winter's fodder should be in place by the end of June.

Handing the arithmetic to an AI assistant

This is a calculation, not a judgement call. It is exactly the kind of job an AI assistant does well. It is also the kind of job that sits undone on a kitchen table for six weeks.

Open any AI assistant and paste something like this, with your own figures swapped in:

Work out my winter fodder budget. I have 60 suckler cows, 25 weanlings under one year, and 20 cattle aged one to two years. Plan for a five month winter plus one month in reserve. Use these Teagasc figures for pit silage needed per animal per month: suckler cow 1.4 tonnes, cattle 0–1 year 0.7 tonnes, cattle 1–2 years 1.3 tonnes. Add a 15% buffer. My pit is 20m long, 9m wide and 2.1m average settled height — convert to fresh tonnes at 0.74 tonnes per cubic metre. I also have 60 bales; count each as 0.9 tonne-equivalents. Show demand, supply, and the shortfall or surplus in tonnes. Show your workings so I can check them.

You will get the answer in seconds, with the steps laid out so you can check them against your own back-of-the-envelope figure.

Two warnings. Check the arithmetic — an assistant will occasionally drop a decimal and state the result with total confidence. And the figures above are Teagasc's published averages, not your farm. Silage quality, pit density and settled height all move the real number.

The same trick works for the grass side. If you are already walking covers, our guide to measuring grass on your phone with PastureBase covers getting the data in.

What does it cost to close a fodder gap?

Teagasc publishes a list of options for closing a deficit. In its own order:

• use remaining nitrogen and phosphorus allowances to lift growth, and take out surplus bales
• grow a third cut
• spread slurry with low-emission equipment
• extend the grazing rotation to 25–30 days in August
• rent land for six to eight weeks for a third cut
• source silage or hay
• feed concentrates at grass to cattle close to finish
• sow forage crops
• buy wholecrop or maize
• buy beet
• sell some stock earlier than planned, including cull cows
• finish stock on minimum roughage and ad-lib ration
• complete a cash flow budget and seek any additional finance early

That last one matters more than it looks. Money is easier to arrange in August than in December.

Teagasc does not rank these by cost, and neither will we. What it does say is that every option carries a cost. Substituting silage with extra concentrate is an expensive one.

The cost anchor is still worth knowing. Teagasc's Grange feed costing model put grazed grass at roughly 14c per kilo of dry matter in June 2026, including a land charge. Concentrates came in at roughly 42c. Grass you grow is about a third the price of feed you buy. That is the whole argument for acting on the demand side first.

Demand-side moves are the cheapest lever you have. Teagasc's dry-weather advice puts it plainly: selling ten cows out of a hundred takes around 180kg of grass a day off your demand. Extending the grazing rotation to 25–30 days in August is the other standard move.

Two things worth knowing as you cost the options. There is no State drought or fodder scheme open, so plan on your own numbers rather than on an announcement. Your co-op may be a different story — Tirlán has feed and fertiliser rebates running for milk suppliers with an order deadline of 1pm on Friday 15 August 2026, and other processors move quietly on this. If you have a deficit, ring your co-op before you ring a merchant. It is a five-minute call and it is the cheapest tonne you will buy all year.

Where to get help

Your Teagasc advisor is the first call. The fodder budget is a standard conversation. Bring your stock numbers and pit dimensions and it takes minutes. The Grass Silage Stock Checker is free and open at interactive.teagasc.ie.

Water may be your binding constraint rather than grass. If so, the rules that apply to farms under the 2026 water conservation order are worth reading alongside this.

Frequently asked questions

Can a fodder budget work on a small suckler farm?

Yes, and it is faster on a small farm because there is less stock to count. The same Teagasc figures apply at any scale — 1.4 tonnes per suckler cow per month, 0.7 for cattle under a year. A 30 cow herd takes about five minutes to work out.

What does it cost to close a fodder deficit in Ireland?

That depends on which option you take, and prices move weekly, so ring two or three merchants before committing. The useful benchmark is Teagasc's June 2026 costing: grazed grass around 14c per kilo of dry matter against around 42c for concentrates. Cutting demand is almost always cheaper than buying feed.

Where do I get help with a fodder budget in Ireland?

Teagasc, through your local advisor or the free Grass Silage Stock Checker. Your co-op adviser is worth a call too — some processors have moved on feed support ahead of any State scheme. Discussion groups are the other good route, because your neighbours are working from the same weather.

The bottom line

A fodder budget done on 1 August gives you options that cost hundreds. The same budget done on 1 November gives you one option that costs thousands. By then everyone else is buying too.

Count the stock. Measure the pit. Subtract.