I recently became involved in the GrassCheck programme, which aims to provide all local farmers with up-to-date information on grass-growing conditions and grass quality.

The project involves pilot farmers from all over Northern Ireland and from a wide range of land types and across a variety of dairy, suckler and sheep systems.

Having met most of the farmers, I think that they have captured a very representative group.

The main focus on each of the farms is to measure the amount of grass grown each week and to find out the quality of that grass.

Then we have to weigh the cattle that are eating this grass, to see if this translates into extra weight gain.

The measuring of the grass involves a GPS platemeter (this is basically a circular disc on the end of a stick).

You walk the paddocks once a week with this device and take 25 to 30 measurements in each paddock. This information is collected by GPS satellite technology and uploaded onto your computer.

When you feed in stock numbers and other bits of information, it gives you the daily growth of your grass and how many days grazing you have ahead.

Probably a lot of farmers think that there is no need for all this, and i’m sure that a lot of my neighbours think that I have lost my marbles when they see me zig zagging across the paddocks on a Saturday morning. I console myself with the fact that scorn was poured on the inventers of tractors.

Visit

The other pilot farmers came out to my farm recently to talk through the grass measuring process and the management involved in maximising production from grazed grass.

A lot of the equipment and technology is relatively new and there were some individual issues, as you would expect.

Personally, I have had no problems, and my grass measuring has been going well.

Amongst the group of pilot farmers, some had already been measuring grass, while others had never measured before. I have been measuring grass for six years now.

It takes me a couple of hours each week but I think that its time well spent. It’s also good exercise.

Boost

If I had any doubts about what I was doing (and why), they were all banished by having this group of farmers on my farm.

To have upwards of twenty farmers who were totally committed to grass, and be able to talk openly about growing and managing swards, really give me a boost.

It’s so easy to neglect the grass but in my opinion that is where the money is in farming.

We can all think of excuses not to manage it, and maybe it easier sometimes to buy a bag of meal, but good grassland management is the main driver of performance on a livestock farm.

I like to think that I am doing a decent job of managing grass but if I’m honest I have a lot more that I could do.

The same goes for the rest of the group, who are probably some of the best grassland managers I have ever met – I don’t think any of them would say that they know it all, when it comes to grass.

There will be opportunities to visit some of the pilot farms over the next few years, which would be a very worthwhile use of time.

We are all caught up in Brexit and what’s going to happen with subsidies. I think that if we look under our feet we are probably wasting more money (by poor grassland management) than we will lose as a result of the changes that lie ahead.

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