Grass: It’s fair to say that grass growth rates have been below expectations for the last week with average growth rates in the mid-60s, as opposed to the mid-80s. Day and nighttime temperatures have been lower than normal over the last few days and it’s definitely having an impact.

On top of that, rainfall in Munster has been exceptionally high with many locations recording two and three times the normal rainfall. Damage was being done over the weekend and some farmers had to stand off cows during the worst of the rain.

Ultimately, this has had a knock-on impact on grass utilisation and it has meant that cows are going through area faster than they should have.

Looking at Pasturebase data, it’s a mixed bag. On the one hand, growth rates are lower than expected, but on the other hand average farm cover is still relatively high at 216kg/cow.

So on average, there are no issues but the reality is there are some farms that are getting tight, particularly if cover per cow is down around 160kg to 170kg/cow and growth rate is close to demand. It may mean that they might have to go back in and graze a paddock that was intended for silage. The key point is that its very hard to know the situation by eye, you really need to walk paddocks and count the number of days ahead or else do a full grass walk and generate a wedge for easy assessment.

Breeding: A number of farmers have been saying that submission rates are lower than they would expect for the time of year. Sure enough, the ICBF data backs this up. For the week up to 1 May, there were 204,937 serves recorded on handheld devices. For the same period in 2025, there were 215,767 serves recorded which is a 5% reduction.

This could be down to a planned later start of breeding, fewer cows in general or it could be down to less cows coming into heat per day. The target submission rate is 90% served in the first three weeks or more realistically, 24 days. Across a 100-cow herd, that’s 90 cows in 24 days which is a target of 3.75 cows to be served per day. It’s not linear so probably best to compare it over the course of a week or so. I would think that lower than normal air temperatures and wet conditions might be to blame, but low body condition score or poor or inadequate heat detection should not be ruled out either.

Calves: At this stage, calves born in early February are at least 10 weeks of age and should be weaned, with the late-February-born calves next to be weaned. I know there is a growing move to keep calves in for a few weeks after weaning to get their rumens more developed before being turned out to grass. This is to help prevent summer scour syndrome, which is a serious problem where it occurs causing severe ill health and a lack of thrive.

Anyone that has had it in calves wants to avoid it but the costs involved in keeping calves indoors needs to be factored in also. One of the ways to prevent it is to avoid feeding very lush grass to young calves and instead put them on heavier covers, at least initially.