North Antrim beef farm sees big benefits from red clover
May 29, 2025
College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise (CAFRE) Beef and Sheep Adviser, Faith Stewart reminds famers that “Grass is the cheapest source of livestock feed and coupled with improved beef prices across the country, allows many the potential to strengthen their margins in the current climate.”
During the summer of 2024 CAFRE held a ‘Profit from Pasture’ farm walk, on the farm of Bill Harpur, Portrush. This walk highlighted the importance of good grassland management. Using healthy gross margin figures, Bill was able to emphasise the role grazed grass has played in his suckler to beef enterprise to achieve this. Alongside this, Bill has explored other avenues to achieve more from his grass such as multi species sward (MSS) and the inclusion of clovers.
A field previously in winter cereals for three years was selected for reseeding. Coming out of an arable rotation, the soil was clean with a low weed infestation and low nitrogen (N) residue. This low N residue aided the establishment of red clover and provided a more even playing field against the perennial ryegrass (PRG) growth competition. A traditional reseed was carried out. This involved spraying the stubble off, ploughing, 2x power harrow, rolled, sowed and rolled again.
Red clover can be grown as a monoculture sward for silage making purposes or more commonly grown as a companion to PRG. If sowing as a monoculture, a seed rate of 6 kg/acre is recommended. If sowing as part of a seed mix, 3 kg of red clover and 9 kg of grass seed per acre. The seed should be planted at a depth of 10-15 mm. As weed infestation can be an issue with red clover. Therefore, some may opt for a stale seedbed. This allows natural weeds to emerge post rolling in a three to four-week time frame and spraying off again, prior to sowing.
A grass seed mix of intermediate and late grass varieties was selected, aiming for a heading date 10 days after Bill’s silage cutting date, along with a 35% red clover seed and 10% white clover. Red clover sometimes earns a poor reputation in terms of low persistency. However, the inclusion of white clover will remain when the red clover has depleted. Whilst the persistency may be short term, red clover can provide long term benefits below the ground. Deep roots will improve soil structure and the N fixing ability from the atmosphere will store N in the soils, ready to be used by the companion PRG varieties. Under correct management, red clover can sequester approximately 150-250 kg N/ha per year. This can represent a significant saving in terms of purchased fertiliser.
Ideally, clover, both red and white prefer a soil pH of 6.5, a soil test showed the field to be slightly lower at 6.1 pH. Due to a limited reseeding window in the spring of 2024, lime was not spread in time for reseeding. Once weather conditions allowed 2 tonne per acre was sowed, providing the clover with more fertile soil conditions. Bill will review soil pH through analysis provided by the SNHS, to be carried out in zone four this year.
Post-management, the sward received 1x bag of CAN and 2000g slurry per acre to aid establishment. This application of N would have encouraged growth until soil temperatures lifted. Whilst grass varieties will start growing at 5-6oC, clover prefers slightly warmer conditions of 8oC. This difference in growing conditions allows many to bridge the gap in their growth curve throughout the grazing season.
Bill’s CAFRE Beef and Sheep Adviser, Faith Stewart, recently connected with him to review the first year of red clover growth. As well as discussing future management plans for the crop. Whilst the red clover did struggle to establish in the cool, damp weather conditions of spring 2024, it did perform well when temperatures increased. Red clover is different to its cousin, white clover, as it grows tall from a deep taproot and establishes a crown. The white clover variety grows from stolons and spreads outwards and creeps across the ground. This crown of red clover can be easily damaged through mowing or heavy grazing.
In the first year of establishment two cuts of silage were harvested and ensiled with a third cut being baled. If grazing the crop, Faith advises to remember that, “Red clover, being a larger leaf variety is more suited to cattle than sheep for grazing. As the crown can be easily damaged it is important not to over-graze or graze in wet conditions.” When grazing with livestock caution must be taken to avoid bloat. Management decisions such as not turning stock in hungry and adding bloat oil to water drinkers must be considered. Tedding was avoided as the protein is stored in the clover leaf and tedding tends to damage the leaf, reducing the quality and quantity of protein.
Silage should be mowed when approximately 50% of the red clover show flower, this is when protein content is at its highest. But this is a management decision as stage of growth of companion grass should also be taken into consideration. Harvest and ensile when grass is approximately 25-30% DM. Third cut silage produced 6 bales/acre and a D-Value of 70%, CP 13.7% and NDF of 49%, driving excellent animal intakes and performance. This high protein silage was targeted to growing stock to minimise concentrate fed.
CAFRE is hosting a Clover Open Day at the Beef and Sheep Centre on Thursday, 5 June 2025. The Open Day comes in the third year of an ongoing four-year project of incorporating white clover into the grazing swards. The Open Day will be held on the Oldstone Road, Antrim.
Attend the event to learn more about the benefits that integrating clover into grazing swards could have for your business. As well as, how it has positively affected the sustainability of the CAFRE enterprises. See which methods of clover establishment have been trialled on the CAFRE farms. Understand the practical challenges encountered with establishing and managing the clover swards and how these challenges have been addressed.
Practical farmer findings from the ‘ZeroNsile’ project ran by Agrisearch, with support from the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI) will be discussed. You can also hear about the exciting upcoming projects in this area planned at CAFRE in the future.
Three tours will be held on Thursday, 5 June. They will commence sharp at 11:00am, 3:00pm and 7:00pm and will last approximately 1.5 hours.
Booking is not required. For more information, please view the event here.