By now most producers have largely decided which crops are going to be left for potential grain recovery and which crops will be baled as hay or silage.

Making the decision to cut a crop has been easy for some paddocks but less clear in others where the possibility of grain recovery still existed.

If you are still assessing the costs of baling hay or silage compared to grain, a hay and silage cost calculator developed by NSW DPI district agronomists can be downloaded from the NSW DPI website at www.agric.nsw.gov.au/drought.

Because of the drought conditions, most canola and cereal crops have a relatively high nutritional value.

This is important, as it will have a positive influence on the cost per unit of energy for preserved hay or silage.

Leaving crops standing and grazing them off is the only option where low forage yields may make hay or silage uneconomic.

As it is not possible to graze all standing crops at once, some crops may be left largely un-grazed until November or December.

During this period there will be losses of fodder quantity and quality and this must be considered when calculating livestock needs.

Over the next few months NSW DPI staff at Wagga will be monitoring standing crops of canola and wheat to measure the loss of both quantity and quality during this period.

Producers will be able to use this data as it becomes available to fine tune feeding requirements.

It will also form a useful resource if these events occur again in the future.

A priority for farmers now is to do some fodder budgeting to determine how many stock can be carried and how much feed is needed to get you through summer and past the anticipated season break in 2007.

Your District Livestock Officer or District Agronomist can help you with this and provide figures for energy and crude protein.