Growth has started to drop back in the past few days. The days are closing in and temperatures are falling gradually.

The big focus over the next week is the final rotation before housing. Getting this right will set the farm up for a good spring.

On heavier farms the final rotation will be starting this week, with the aim of having close to 75% of the farm closed by the start of November.

Drier farms should be aiming to start closing up paddocks by the 10 October, with 60% closed by the start of November.

Management

On farms with about 30 days left to achieve the 60% target, aim to graze 2% of the farm per day for the next few weeks. If cows require more feed, it should come in the form of supplement.

Hitting residuals of 4cm is important now to ensure there’s good-quality grass coming back over winter. Strip wires are the best way of doing this without damaging ground.

Every decision now has to be made with the spring in mind. Target dry paddocks first, as you want these with the highest covers for big groups of cows towards the end of February.

Next on the list is those paddocks close to the yard with good accessibility. These paddocks will be for smaller groups of fresh calvers in early February. Ideally, these paddocks would be reasonably dry, with medium covers of 1,000-1,100kg DM/ha grown back. Lighter, leafy covers are easier for freshly calved cows to digest.

Last to graze are heavier paddocks and high clover paddocks. These will be grazed last in the spring and lower covers will allow clover to thrive over the winter.

Swardwatch

  • Growth is dropping gradually. The time for building cover is essentially over, as we enter the last rotation.
  • A rotation planner will keep the farm disciplined over the next few weeks.
  • Every farm is different, so target a percentage of the platform you want to graze per day to hit the 60% target.
  • Decide on an order for grazing paddocks, that will maximise the potential to graze grass next spring.

    • Shane Hegarty – Craanlusky,Co Carlow

    The ground conditions were starting to get difficult until we got the good weather last week. We’ve had the 12-hour strip wire out since and it will stay out. We’ll be looking to start closing up paddocks in the next couple of days. We have some strong clover paddocks that we’ll graze first and try and get them grazed again before housing the cows. We try and keep the cover low on these over the winter.

    The cows are performing well at the moment; they had been getting a small bit of palm kernel up to last week, which helped drive on the fat percentage, but this is no longer in the diet.

    Stocking rate (LU/ha): 3.18

    Growth (kg/cow): 50

    Average farm cover (kg/ha): 929

    Yield (l/cow): 16.5

    Fat (%): 6.11

    Protein (%): 4.46

    Milk solids (kg/cow):1.8

    Concentrates (kg/cow): 3

    Shane Hegarty.

    Caroline O’Sullivan – Teagasc Curtins,Co Cork

    The farm cover has recovered significantly from where it was a few weeks ago. We had been supplementing cows heavily through September to try and get the cover up. While we didn’t get it as high as we might have liked, we have a low stocking rate, so our cover/cow is strong.

    A lot of the paddocks have covers around 1,400kg DM/ha, with very few heavy and very few lighter ones at 700-900kg DM/ha. They all got growing again around the same time when the growth kicked in a few weeks ago. We need to ensure the cows are not flying through those covers too quickly in the last round.

    Stocking rate (LU/ha): 2.12

    Growth (kg/cow): 25

    Average farm cover (kg/ha): 883

    Yield (l/cow): 18

    Fat (%): 5.47

    Protein (%): 4.2

    Milk solids (kg/cow): 1.79

    Concentrates (kg/cow): 4

    Caroline O' Sullivan.

    Tim Quinn –Castlecarra, Co Mayo

    We’re quite highly stocked at the moment, as we’re waiting for a new reseed to come back into the platform. To fill the gap, we’re zero-grazing in grass from an outblock. This grass is coming from what would be a fourth-cut red clover silage crop. It’s helping to keep demand down, as growth has dropped from the 50kg last week.

    This is a heavier farm, so we’ve just started closing. The cows will be housed by early November, weather depending. We’ll aim to close at around 550kg DM/ha on average. With a lot of rain forecast for the weekend, we’ll have the strip wires out to try and get 4cm residuals.

    Stocking rate (LU/ha): 3.4

    Growth (kg/cow): 30

    Average farm cover (kg/ha): 781

    Yield (l/cow): 18.5

    Fat (%): 5.63

    Protein (%): 4.32

    Milk solids (kg/cow): 1.9

    Concentrates (kg/cow): 2

    Irish Dairy Farmer ,Tim Quinn.