Growth rate on our Grass+ farms averaged 65kg/day for the past seven days, but like last week, the highest growth rates have been recorded in the north, south and west – with dry farms in the east and southeast struggling with moisture deficits.

According to Met Éireann, most of the country got some rainfall over the past seven days, but amounts varied depending on location, with some parts of the west getting up to 25mm. Where rainfall of this level has been received, you can be pretty certain that grass growth will be high for the next fortnight.

Over 100kg/day was measured in Galway and Mayo this week. While this is good as it provides lots of feed, it is hard to manage from a quality point of view.

Walk the farm twice a week and cut out surplus paddocks. Keep pre-grazing yields lower than 1,500kg/ha if at all possible.

The forecast for the weekend is for thundery showers. As we know, these can be hit and miss. If growth rates on your farm have slowed down and you are eating into average farm cover, then you need to take action to avoid deficits spiralling out of control.

In my view, the best way to manage a drought situation is to hold rotation length at 21 or 22 days.

This means you should be grazing 1/21 of your farm per day. So if 100 acres are available to the herd, then you should be grazing about 4.5 acres/day. If there is insufficient grass in this area to fully feed the cows, then make up the difference with supplement.

A different strategy is to try to maintain average farm cover at 150kg/cow, or thereabouts, but in my view too much supplement can be fed to maintain this level of grass cover, especially for short-term deficits.

Donal Patton

Teagasc Ballyhaise

Stocking rate (cows/ha) 3.76

Growth rate (kg/day) 81

Average farm cover (kg/cow) 141

Yield (kg/cow/day) 20.3

Fat % 4.40

Protein % 3.62

Milk solids (kg/cow) 1.68

Supplement fed (kg/cow/day) 0.5

Grass is hopping this week, we got 10mm of rain over the past three or four days, so the grass is really flying it. We grew 81kg/day and skipped over four paddocks that were surplus. We set the average farm cover at 141kg/cow, which might be a bit on the low side, but I think we’re going to get good growth for the next 10 days at least. We stopped feeding the meal last Friday. The next five paddocks on the wedge are all aftergrass, so quality is excellent. At this stage, we have about 90% of the farm cut for silage at least once.

Steven Fitzgerald

Teagasc Curtins

Stocking rate (cows/ha) 3.3

Growth rate (kg/day) 56

Average farm cover (kg/cow) 190

Yield (kg/cow/day) 22

Fat % 4.2

Protein % 3.65

Milk solids (kg/cow) 1.78

Supplement fed (kg/cow/day) 0

Growth rate is back a bit on last week’s figure, but we still have plenty of grass by re-introducing some paddocks that were closed for silage. Some of these have high covers of 2,500kg/ha, but they are aftergrass from silage cut in early June so quality is still reasonably good. This is allowing us time to slow down the rotation. If we didn’t have these we would probably be feeding supplement. We still have two paddocks closed for silage and we are going to cut these this week. We got 10mm of rain over the weekend, which should help us to maintain growth rates. Cell count is averaging 80k since the start of the year.

Tom Walsh

Kildorrery, Co Cork

Stocking rate (cows/ha) 3.81

Growth rate (kg/day) 64

Average farm cover (kg/cow) 171

Yield (kg/cow/day) 23.5

Fat % 4.18

Protein % 3.81

Milk solids (kg/cow) 1.92

Supplement fed (kg/cow/day) 0

Growth rate for the past seven days was 64kg/day. We got good rain last Saturday night so we should get good growth for the next week or so. We are grazing covers of 1,300 kg/ha and we are taking out surplus paddocks every week in order to keep quality right. Despite the rain, some paddocks are getting stressed and are sending up seed heads, so we usually try to pick these for silage. Cows are milking well, we’re not feeding any meal but cows are getting the full rate of minerals in the water. So far, the non-return rate from the first round of breeding is at 65%. The bulls will stay in for another three weeks or so.

Gerard Brennan

Strokestown, Co Roscommon

Stocking rate (cows/ha) 3.72

Growth rate (kg/day) 44

Average farm cover (kg/cow) 172

Yield (kg/cow/day) 21.5

Fat % 3.99

Protein % 3.42

Milk solids (kg/cow) 1.58

Supplement fed (kg/cow/day) 2.5

We’ve a split calving herd with 30% due to calve this autumn. The farm has lots of rock close to the surface, so we do burn up easily and growth rates are beginning to dip a bit. We are grazing slightly higher covers than we were, about 1,450 kg/ha, to slow down the round length as growth has dropped. We are spreading 27 units of CAN/acre in a split application – doing half the farm each fortnight – which is working well and cutting down on the work. The first of the autumn-calving cows are due to be dried off in the next couple of day. All cows are first lactation having been depopulated with TB last year.