While weather has been nothing short of a disaster over the last six weeks in terms of grazing, the week ahead is promised more settled and is a real opportunity to get through farm area.

The targets for area grazed currently are 70% on dry farms and 40% on heavier farms. These are the spring rotation planner targets but the reality on the ground is very different.

Most farms are up to 20% behind, which is the equivalent to about ten days grazing. There is both an upside and a downside to this. From a positive viewpoint there is likely to be a lot of grass on these farms.

With large numbers of cows calved and intakes up, cows will start to fly through this grass. Keeping demand high by keeping supplement like silage and meal feeding levels low, will help to get area grazed and average farm cover reduced.

The downside to this, is that a lot of area grazed in a short time frame will mean a lot of paddocks with similar covers going into the second round.

The grass wedge will be flatter and it may be harder to manage pre-grazing yields. This isn’t the end of the world as growth rates will be up and the wedge will stabilise itself but it’s something to be mindful of.

Choosing paddocks

It’s a real possibility now that some paddocks on the platform won’t be grazed in the first round.

Heavy covers of greater than 2,000kg DM/ha will be starting to lose quality now and will take much longer to graze, slowing down the round.

Closing one or two of these paddocks off for a cut of surplus bales in early April, may be a good option for farms with too high of an average farm cover and too much area still to graze.

Ideally, farms in this situation should keep grazing low to medium covers in order to get enough area grazed and re-growing for the second round.

A lot of the lighter covers have been grazed already as they were selected for grazing during bad weather first but there should still be medium covers of less than 1,500kg DM/ha that cows will graze through quickly.

Average Farm Cover

Monitor average farm cover (AFC) closely over the coming weeks. It should not drop below 600kg DM/ha before the start of the second rotation. If it does, there won’t be enough grass to see the herd through.

Monitoring this closely and acting on it, will prevent running out of grass and having to supplement heavily in early April

If the start of the second round is roughly three weeks away, the farm needs to budget the grass available. An AFC of 900kg DM/ha, cannot drop by more than 300kg DM/ha before the start of the second round.

That’s equivalent to 100kg DM/ha each week, for the next three weeks. Monitoring this closely and acting on it, will prevent running out of grass and having to supplement heavily in early April. Supplementing at that stage, will have a big negative impact on peak production.

Fertiliser

The first round of fertiliser should be out at this stage. Ideally, farms will have gotten close to 30 units of nitrogen/acre by now but it's not the case across the board.

If any farm has not yet gone out with fertiliser, it might be worth looking at going with three-quarters to a full bag of protected urea/acre.

This should only be done when there's no rain promised within 24 to 48 hours.

For farms who have some fertiliser out already, it's time to start thinking about the second round. The target is 60 units of nitrogen/acre by the beginning of April.

Work back from this figure to determine what goes out in the next couple of weeks.