Dealing with drought

With little rain falling over the past seven days, grass growth has dropped off on many farms, especially towards the south of the country, and drought conditions have started to take hold.

With small amounts of rain forecast and the fact that we are entering into what is traditionally the driest time of the year, the dry conditions are likely to be with us for a while.

Taking appropriate action early is important. The first thing to do is walk the farm to see what grass is available to stock. It’s easy to count out how many days grazing you have ahead of stock and if this is below 15, it means that you are going to run tight for grass.

Slowing animals down and increasing the number of days animals stay in paddocks is a good option. This could be feeding meal, feeding hay or feeding silage, anything that allows more time for grass to grow on paddocks due to be grazed.

Grass is still growing, albeit at a lot slower pace than normal, hence the need to slow things down. Topping should stop as re-growths will take too long in the current dry weather. It’s probably a better option to try and graze heavy covers in the current weather. Utilisation will not be as good, but it will mean extra days grazing as opposed to making extra silage.

Check drinkers daily to make sure stock have enough water. See this week’s beef page for some questions and answers on dealing with the current conditions.

Feeding dairy beef calves

If calves are grazing good-quality grass full of leaf with no stem, this should be sufficient to achieve good liveweight gain. Talking to farmers in dairy beef systems, many of them continue to feed 1kg/ head/day during the summer. At €240/t, 1kg/head/day will cost €0.24/head/day.

Meal feeding is a good herding tool for many. Once calves come to the trough and feed, you can eliminate a lot of sickness. It also keeps stock settled during periods of wet, cold weather and makes moving them a lot easier. On our Thrive demo farm in Tipperary it was felt it was easier to feed concentrates through the grazing season rather than having to house and feed more concentrates at the end of the finishing period. With current drought conditions and grass shortages on some farms, feeding meal to calves will help conserve grass supplies until rain arrives.

Under 16 month bulls

I’ve had a few calls from farmers wondering whether to hold off killing for a few weeks to see will things improve. My opinion is that the beef market will continue to hold or improve in the coming weeks for in-spec stock, with bulls likely to track heifers and steers. Gambling on a price increase with bulls is dangerous, though. The problem is going over the age limit and off the grid could mean a €0.30/kg penalty along with a poor price. The other factor is if a bull is laying down fat at the end of an intensive finishing period, then the margin they are leaving is reducing. Bulls are expensive to feed and should be slaughtered the minute you think they are ready.