Building grass: On pages 28 and 29, we review what some farmers are doing in terms of building grass. The message for this week is that you need to know where you are in terms of grass cover. However, you also need to know where you want to go to. Farms stocked less than 2.8 cows/ha will aim for a farm cover of 500kg of grass per livestock unit for mid- to late-September – that’s a farm cover of 1,250kg if stocked at 2.5 cows/ha and 1,400kg if stocked at 2.8 cows/ha. At that stage, they will start to eat into the farm cover of grass and reduce farm cover from there to the end of the grazing season. Remember, the last round of grazing will start in early October.

If you are not measuring grass weekly, then you still need to know where you are now in terms of what grass you have and you still need to know where you are going.

In old money then, the language is to extend the rotation from 20 to 30 days around now and then up to a 40-day rotation for the start of October. This means then you will have 40 days of grass ahead of the cows taking you up to mid-November. It all depends on weather, of course, and wet weather tactics might come into play, depending on rainfall and land type.

Conacre: I had a couple of calls from farmers who had land leased in outfarms from year-to-year following my conacre comments last week. Most who phoned had a bad experience in short-term leases because, in most cases, they had invested in the farm by reseeding, fencing and watering and next thing, when the farm was up to speed, the land owner comes along and says the land is going up for sale. It’s hard to be critical of the farmers that leased the land short-term.

If you do lease land, you need to get a return, and to get a return, you need to spread fertilizer. There is no point in spreading fertilizer on paddocks that are not growing grass. The solution for some of those farmers that lost short-term leases is to look at contract rearing of replacement heifers as a real option. It reduces the workload considerably and solves the land problem. It’s a game changer for those who are expanding cow numbers and not increasing labour on the farm. By contract rearing, you are hiring labour another way and you don’t have any capital expenditure to do on leased land. Someone is looking after your stock on a daily basis, allowing you more time to focus on the extra milking cows.

Winter forage: There are some very good-looking maize crops around and farmers should now assess winter feed stocks. All feeds should be given a common platform (the UFL) where they can then be compared, based on their relative energy value. The dairy cows’ diet must be made up of at least 40% forage. If grass silage was purchased for €130/ t of DM, this equates to a cost of €187/1,000 UFL, while baled silage purchased at €26/bale also equates to €187/1,000 UFL. Maize silage purchased at €130/t DM equates to a cost of €181/1,000 UFL. If maize silage was purchased for €600/acre with a yield of 6t DM/acre, the relative cost would be €152/1,000 UFL, while €800/acre equates to a cost of €204/1,000 UFL. Have your sums done before you go buying forage.