Rain for farms in the south and southeast over the last week should mean pulling the handbrake even harder on grazing, for at least another couple of weeks.

Growth in September is normally good but as we move into October and November that growth starts to decline.

With this in mind, over the coming weeks farms should be looking to make the most of decent growing conditions and build an average farm cover towards 1,000kg DM/ha.

Doing so, will allow for grazing into late November. By not building cover now, farms will be forced to supplement cows with silage or high levels of meal all the way through to housing.

To build a farm cover of 1,000kg DM/ha, means adding 150kg to 200kg of cover per week for the next four weeks. Achieving this requires setting demand around 20kg to 30kg/ha lower than the growth rate each day.

For example, if growth rates are 30kg/ha per day, the farm can’t really afford to allocate any grass or cover won’t build.

However, once growth goes above 30kg/ha per day, the excess can be allocated. Therefore, a farm growing 55kg/ha per day can allocate 25kg/ha of grass while still building the average farm cover up quickly.

If stocking rate is three cows/ha, that’s over 8kg (25kg / 3 LU/ha) of grass per cow each day.

Growth will improve quickly but until it does, cows could be on a full winter diet.

Indoors vs Outdoor

Essentially, there are two options for farms that will continue to feed heavily and let grass build.

The first option is housing cows now. The herd can be housed by day, by night or full-time with feeding done in the shed. This prevents cows moving around from one paddock to the next and grazing the recovering grass. It also means feeding space won’t be as much of an issue.

The second option is to continue with cows outside, letting them into the shed for a few hours before each milking to feed. This was working very well for farms while it was dry but the problem with this option is if rain continues to fall, cows will start to dirty these paddocks a lot quicker.

As well as slowing down regrowths, cows lying in dirtier paddocks will have a higher risk of mastitis.

Having cows in the shed in early September is far from ideal, so too is cleaning down cubicles, but if doing so for a week or two means having plenty of grass until late November, it’s an option worth considering.