The recently launched grass promotion initiative Grass 10 is a great idea. The 10 is a target to graze paddocks 10 times a year and/or to utilise 10t of grass dry matter per hectare per year. The figures are really a guide; the important point is the focus on grass. Grass is truly our ace card in Ireland – it is our best crop by quite a distance and the more we can use it the better the farmer’s margin.

There is room for more of us to use this great feed to better advantage and hopefully the next four years will keep us focused.

Last week we had a nice bit of grass activity on the home farm even though it is only early February. We reviewed our soil analysis and made a plan for the year. We also availed of our co-op, Lakeland’s, offer of subsidised soil sampling and had every paddock sampled. It will be interesting to compare these with last year’s readings. I fear a drop in phosphorus and potassium as we used a lot of straight nitrogen last year.

Last week we took the opportunity to do the first grass cover of the year as the weather has been super and we wanted to get a measurement on what had happened over the past 40 days.

The best paddocks grew 10kg DM/ha/day and the older swards effectively stayed more or less the same. This gave us a 40-day average growth rate of 6kg as we have quite a few new reseeds which really perform during a benign winter.

We spread slurry last October and saw a significant benefit in terms of extra growth. We spread some with a dribble bar and others with a splash plate and while it is just an observation I feel that there was a better response from the dribble bar.

The longest-running jibe on our farm is how much I like the job of spreading fertiliser (guilty as charged). With this in mind I got my first fix of the year last week and spread most of the paddocks. I never saw the ground so dry for the first round. There are usually a few soft spots and even some lying water but this year everything was totally dry. We have some boggy areas close to the farm so on the first round it is not unusual to find some snipe loitering in the paddocks but not this year. Most of the paddocks got 30 units of N and many got slurry by dribble bar. We did not spread three paddocks that have covers of 1,500kg or so as these will be grazed soon.

Another grass-related activity last week was an assessment of how the various grass species were persisting. Most of our paddocks are single varieties of grass so it is good to get the feedback on how they are doing. This project is part of the Teagasc PastureBase programme. The report back was favourable.

All in all, this is a good start to what might just be a great grass year.