Maize better value now than ever before
2024 was a challenging year for maize crops across the country with wet weather impacting pollination and cob formation and a lack of heat throughout the summer impacting crop yields. However, maize is still an excellent home-grown energy crop and a large acreage is expected to be sown again in 2025.
Often described as a more consistent and cost-effective winter feed compared to a 2 or 3-cut silage system a decent crop of maize represents excellent value for money. It is also less expansive to harvest and transport. It responds well to organic manure and maize ground is the perfect home for slurry and farmyard manure.
Maize is an excellent break crop in a tillage system with later spring sowings allowing harvest in time for drilling of winter crops. While most maize is grown by livestock farmers, there is a growing market for maize produced by growers for sale to livestock farmers.
With the added cost of plastic film and improved open genetics, we are seeing a major shift towards sowing maize without plastic at all. As a feed maize has been shown to increase animal intakes and increase animal performance
- Milk yield
- Live-weight gain
- Kill-out%
Like any forage crop, choosing the right variety for your specific farm scenario is critical and DLF have a range of varieties to suit all sites from the most favourable ground in the south and east to later ground further north.
Check out our variety guide in the video below or call Ned Kehoe (087 398 0053) for details.
- Prospect - a very early maturing open variety which makes it suitable for a wide range of sites around the country.
- Resolute – a top-performer in the open but suitable for sowing under plastic too. Will produce massive yields in the most favourable sites.
- Severus – a very early open variety that has been performing year after year.