One difficulty with dairy calf-to-beef farm enterprises is that the demand for grass early in the season is quite low. In cases where there are no other stock on farm, it is easy for grass growth to overtake daily demand quite quickly.

This spring the problem was exacerbated by the fact that turnout was much later than intended. Ideally, the first of the yearling stock would have gotten out to grass in late February or early March. However, ground conditions did not allow this to happen this year.

The first cattle were turned out by farmer John Hally on 18 March. This left us with a choice to make in regards to grazing the silage ground.

Graze or skip?

Again, in an ideal world silage ground would have been grazed and closed by the first days of April, allowing a mid-May first-cut harvest date. Looking at the situation in mid-March, the decision was made to graze the silage ground as there was a decent cover of grass on it.

The importance of top-quality silage to a dairy calf-to-beef system cannot be over-emphasised if these systems are to leave a positive margin.

Yearling bullocks at grass.

Last winter’s first-cut silage was 76DMD and this, along with 2kg concentrates, drove performance of the calves over the winter period (1.17kg/day bullocks and 1.03kg/day heifers).

Leaving the silage ground ungrazed could have lowered the silage DMD by as much as eight digestibility units, turning top-class silage into a very average feed, needing high concentrate supplementation rates to maintain performance.

Although the last of the silage ground was only closed last weekend, just over six weeks growing means we can still be cutting silage the last days of May or early June.

One of the paddocks taken out as surplus grazing last week.

Surplus grass

Having grazed the silage ground, some of the grazing ground now has paddocks that have gone beyond grazing. Ten acres were cut early last week and baled two days later on Thursday 16 April. A further 12 acres will be mowed on Tuesday 21 April.

Staggering mowing by a week allowed some paddocks to bulk up further but, more importantly, it will stagger the time frame of them coming back for grazing.

Daily grass growth rate is currently 54kgDM/ha, while demand is now 36kgDM/ha with silage ground taken out of the equation.