Philip Truesdale aims to grow as much high-quality grass as is possible and to get maximum utilisation of grass by grazing his cattle in paddocks.
At a GrassCheck farm walk last week, organised by AgriSearch and AFBI, Philip described his grassland management system to a big crowd of farmers.
Measuring grass
Philip has plenty of data at his fingertips as he walks his farm every week, measuring grass with a Jenquip plate meter. The figures are uploaded to GrassCheck and to AgriNet Grass, a grassland management software programme. It takes two hours to walk and measure 40 paddocks (which are in two separate blocks).
As Philip says, “it’s time well spent”. Since grass is the cheapest feed for his cattle at 6p/kg DM (with silage 12p/kg and concentrates at 27p/kg), Philip knows that he can keep his costs down by making the most of grass.
Paddocks
The average paddock size is 0.53ha (1.3ac), which is grazed for two days with a 16 to 18-day recovery period at this time of year.
With his ewes housed during the winter and with the early spring this year, some cattle have been out since the end of February, with almost all of them out by the end of March. Philip is measuring his grass from mid-February and initially cattle go into covers of 2,500kg DM/ha. As the season advances, pre-grazing covers range from 2,600kg to 3,000kg DM/ha and are grazed down in two days to between 1,500kg and 1,700kg.
Philip has a plan for his spring rotation and a chart showing his grass wedge, paddock by paddock
Healthy soils are key to getting good levels of production. Philip regularly applies lime, and pH levels are in the range 5.9 to 6.1. Nitrogen is at 150-170 units per acre, with adequate levels of phosphate, potassium and sulphur.
By measuring his paddocks and putting the data into the Agrinet programme, Philip has a plan for his spring rotation and a chart showing his grass wedge, paddock by paddock.
By constantly tracking the supply of grass and the demand placed on it by grazing livestock, Philip can make prompt decisions during times of grass surplus or deficit
On the day of the visit, his grass was growing very well at 79kg DM/ha and he has a grass cover for the farm of 2,345kg DM/ha. For the whole of May 2017, grass growth averaged 73kg DM and for 2018 it was 77kg.
By constantly tracking the supply of grass and the demand placed on it by grazing livestock, Philip can make prompt decisions during times of grass surplus or deficit. In fact, he says that last year he spotted the coming reduction in grass growth in the middle of June, two weeks before it was obvious to the eye, and he was able to make early changes to his stocking rate – avoiding a crisis situation. Last July, his grass growth rate dropped to only 22kg DM/ha, compared with the more usual 63kg seen in 2017.
End of season
The other useful function of the AgriNet programme is that at the end of the growing season, the software can summarise the tonnage of grass grown per hectare on each paddock.
On Philip’s farm last year, the best five paddocks grew between 10t and 14t DM/ha. The worst five paddocks grew only 5t-8.2t DM/ha.
Reseeding is a regular activity on the farm and Aber varieties of grass are used
Hence, the best paddocks were growing twice as much grass as the worst. Philip uses this information to identify paddocks for reseeding.
Reseeding is a regular activity on the farm and Aber varieties of grass are used. Most recently, Philip used AberZeus and AberChoice – intermediate, diploid perennials.
No clover is included, as the sprays used to control docks in the growing swards would take out any clover plants.
Stock
Philip’s fattening stock include 25 bucket-reared calves, in addition to his own suckler calves which are by Simmental and Limousin AI, as well as his Limousin and Angus bulls.
He aims to kill the dairy-bred stock at 24 months, at 340kg deadweight. His home-bred stock go at 20 months at 400kg for the steers and 350kg for the heifers. Almost all animals grade as R3 and R4.