The grass year for us really starts every October when we start closing up fields as ewes are on the last rotation.

It is important to get some of the farm closed up early to build up some grass for the ewes as they lamb.

Whilst we try our best to have enough it is always a fine balance with trying to extend the grazing season as long as we can.

Best place for ewes is outdoors

After all, the best place for ewes pre-lambing is outdoors - we find they are far healthier.

I even see it at present with the last 70 ewes indoors still that have been housed since Christmas. We had not one foot issue with the ewes that were only in for 6-7 weeks but in the last week I notice a few getting lame.

Grass growth measurement

We had been talking about fertiliser at lunchtime about 10 days ago but the forecast made us leave the spreader in the shed. When conditions did improve last week I set about taking some grass measurements.

I joined the Irish Grassland Association a number of years ago and on joining you receive a quadrant, shears, scales and soil thermometer.

Our heaviest covers were around 850-1100kg/dm/ha down to zero cover on the fields that have never been reseeded and were grazed over the winter. I do measure grass growth here - not methodically - but I do it. Why wouldn’t you?

It’s easy and simple, takes very little time and helps hugely with plans.

What to spread and where to spread it

We then decided based on the soil tests/amounts of grass, what to spread and where to spread it. The out-farm, which is correct for PH and P and K, got just under 100kg/ha of urea. We spread some pig slurry on a different part of this farm every January.

Some of the reseeds at home got urea at 65kg/ha or CAN at 120kg/ha - these had received cattle slurry in early February. The hungrier fields got 10-7-25 + sulphur which is a tillage mix but we find it excellent at putting a great thick butt in the sward. We use it as part of our silage fertiliser plan as well.

We buy our fertiliser from the local Drummonds depot. They are normally competitive enough on price and as we are not massive users we wouldn’t get the discounts some heavy users get by shopping around.

I find it very handy insofar as it’s only a 15 minute drive in the tractor. Drummonds load me, and I have no plastic bags and wrappers to recycle so this saves me money and time.

The fertiliser was spread last Wednesday and Thursday and received just the right amount of rain on Saturday morning to wash it in. It will be interesting to see the results of the fields treated with Urea or CAN; we hadn’t used urea in years as our soil indexes were poor.

Urea v CAN debate

One thing that always gets a lot of debate is the urea versus CAN product. Some swear by urea and others not so much. That is why I used a bit of both this year to help make up our own minds as Urea is the cheapest nitrogen per kg. The temperatures are rising and so is daylight hours so hopefully I can report back to you with an update on growth fairly soon.