Looking at the weather over the next few weeks, Thursday appears the only day in which we may have some level of rainfall, but even this isn’t promised.

We have already had close to a week of no rain, with dry farms really beginning to struggle to see growth anywhere near demand.

The only solution is to reduce demand, however it may be. The simplest way for dairy farms is to up meal feeding in the parlour, but do this on a phased basis in order not to sicken cows.

Upping meal levels from 1kg to 4kg will reduce demand by about 10kg DM/ha for most farms.

The other alternative is to introduce silage at milking times and while this is more labour-some than pulling the handle in the parlour, another 3kg of silage will bring us down a further 10.5kg for a herd stocked at 3.5 LU/ha. Combined (meal feeding and silage), we should be looking at reducing demand by 21kg DM/ha.

Other options

Other options would include increasing the grazing area by bringing in some second-cut silage ground or taking some stock off the grazing platform. Neither might be an option depending on farm set-up, but it may make more sense to graze some available silage ground than feed out bales.

The main aim is to keep farm cover up as high as we can. If it dips below 550kg DM/ha, then we are in trouble. The leaf area on paddocks will be low, with the result being that we have lower growth; remember grass grows grass.

Every effort needs to be done to keep farm cover up, as if we eat into it too much, the longer and more painful coming out of this dry spell will be. It will also result in a large volume of paddocks all being at the same cover when growth kicks off again, which will cause its own headaches.

Temporarily housing cows may not be a bad option and, provided sheds are cool, it may be more comfortable for cows to be in by day and out by night.

For drystock farmers, spring-calving cows and calves are relatively content, with high-dry matter grass and are not hard to keep fed, but, again, if you are on dry soil, some supplementation in the form of silage may need to be put in place to hold the rotation and avoid eating into covers.

Mid-season lambing flocks can look towards weaning lambs and reducing demand that way, prioritising the best grass for store lambs.