It’s been another tough week on Tullamore Farm with grass growth yet to take off. Average farm cover has dropped to 350kg DM/ha. Once cover dropped under 400, we had to take the decision to take some stock off the grazing area.
With 66 cows calved and shed space at a premium in the yard, the decision was taken to stand off the 60 dairy cross heifers on a sacrifice paddock and feed them silage and meal for seven to 10 days to allow grass catch up again. There is still ample silage left in the yard and this will be used to slow things up.
We currently have 50% of the farm grazed, which is about 20% behind target at this stage.
Grass has picked up with growth of 21kg DM/ha over the past seven days. Soil temperatures on Wednesday ranged between 7°C and 9°C so we're hoping that growth will increase.
Some 120 acres of the farm got 35 units/acre of urea on 17 February and 35 acres that has been grazed got 35 units urea/acre this week. Slurry has been spread on 40 acres with the umbilical pipe system.
We currently have 50% of the farm grazed, which is about 20% behind target at this stage. This will mean the end of the first rotation will finish up later than planned. We decided to close up 30 acres of silage this week. These paddocks had been grazed with sheep up until Christmas and have very little regrowth.
These fields got 2,500 gallons of slurry/acre this week and will get fertiliser once conditions allow. This will be aimed for a mid May cut and will be fed to ewes and weanlings next winter. Trying to graze this when land dries would mean closing up for silage would be too late.
Rotation
Meal was introduced to these heifers seven days ago to try to slow up the rotation but with difficult grazing conditions, they were still moving too fast around paddocks. There are also 38 cows and calves out grazing in two groups. Cows are getting 3kg of meal/day until grass growth picks up. They have received a magnesium bolus to protect against tetany and have access to high mag licks.
Lambing is expected to get very busy in the next seven to 10 days.
Calving is going well with 66 cows calved and 63 live calves on the ground. Most cows are calving unassisted with birth weights running between 38-50kg. Lambing started in the last few days with seven ewes lambed so far. Once lambed, ewes will go out after two to three days to paddocks around the yard that are well fenced. These paddocks will be used to bunch up ewes into batches of 30-40 before going to permanent grazing.