After storm Amy last week, it couldn’t have been more opposite this week, and cattle that may have been housed in some areas have actually gone back out to grass.

At the same time ground conditions have improved, growth has remained solid; having lagged behind on a lot of drier farms for most of the summer, we experienced several weeks of growth exceeding demand, allowing covers to build on these farms.

Rotation lengths should now be at 35 days, with the aim being to have 70% of farms closed by the end of October. On wetter farms this should be increased to 80-85%. While some farms, especially these wetter ones, may argue that little to no grazing happens in November or indeed late October. However, every effort should be made to have some stock, be they weanlings or cows, at grass in to November.

We often talk about farm cover being too light on some farms in spring, but a heavy cover on heavy ground can be as much if not more of a pain.

Even if you don’t have an autumn rotation plan done, take note of a few things on your farm and try to plan grazing around that. The three things to note should be wet or poorly accessible paddocks, dry paddocks with good access and clover paddocks.

1. Wet paddocks

These paddocks should be grazed now in the early part of the last rotation. Firstly, they may be difficult to graze later in October/November, but more importantly they will likely be grazed later in the first rotation in spring. We don’t mind these paddocks carrying a heavy cover as when thee will be grazed, most cows will be calved and their appetites increasing, with improved weather conditions.

2. Dry paddocks

These are the paddocks that we want with a cover of 700-800kg DM/ha in February. The are the driest with the best access for that early grazing and at that cover it will be easy for freshly calved cows to graze out, especially if we are on-off grazing.

3.Clover paddocks

Bar high N chemical fertiliser and non-clover safe spray, the best way to kill off clover is to allow grass to smoother it out. If we want to try and get clover to thrive and tiller, we need to have these paddocks going into the winter with a low cover on them to allow sunlight into the base.