The warm, dry spell of weather over the next week does make for lovely farming conditions for the most part, once ample shade and water are provided to yourself and stock. There is a pressing issue with it though, in that just two weeks ago we had similar weather.
While there was some rainfall in the interim, dry farms, particularly those in the east and south, will run a serious risk of farm cover plummeting due to a lack of growth.
The key thing to do is not let farm cover run down below 500kg DM/ha, and ideally 550kg Dm/ha. It goes back to the old adage ‘grass grows grass’, and if we do not have enough grass on farm, we do not have enough green cover, consequently affecting our growth rate.
Supplementation or tightening up of stock will be required to bring down demand if the farm is at risk of burning up. Autumn calved cows can be weaned and used as toppers to tidy up poor quality grass, or some second cut ground may have to be grazed.
Ger McSweeney – Millstreet, Co Cork
We got a nice amount of rain since the last dry spell, which suits our heavy farm. At the same time, we will just have to be cautious regarding taking out any paddocks.
Once growth maintains, we might take out some next week, but will err on the side of caution for now. Cows are cleaning out one of the strongest paddocks there now. We won’t be doing any topping for fear of stressing out grass.
I will be scanning any cows I think are empty and remove these out from the bulls. Beef heifers were weighed last week and have gained 0.9kg/head/day since turn out.
A half bag of 29-0-14 + S/acre was spread across a good portion of the grazing block with recent rainfall, which has shown a good response and should keep things ticking along nicely.
System Suckler to weanling
Soil type Variable
Farm cover (kg/DM/ha) 864
Growth (kg/DM/ha/day) 59
Demand (kg/DM/ha/day) 40
Shaun Diver – Tullamore Farm, Co Offaly
We are looking at a week of dry weather ahead of us, and with the out-farm being dry in nature we have a lot of our silage ground now back in the grazing rotation, but there hasn’t been much opportunity to get slurry or chemical N back out on those silage fields cut in mid-June.
We started grazing our reseed this week, which has a cover of 1,300kg DM/ha on it. Yearling hoggets rearing lambs are giving it a light graze, and we will come back to it in a couple of weeks.
In case this dry spell continues and growth falls off, in order to try and stay ahead of that, we will look to wean lambs next week. Lambs will be, on average, 15 weeks old next week. Weaning these will allow us drop demand by tightening up ewes as we dry them off and hold our best grass for lambs.
System Suckler to beef
Soil type Variable
Farm cover (kg/DM/ha) 711
Growth (kg/DM/ha/day) 40
Demand (kg/DM/ha/day) 35
William Treacy – Hackballscross, Co Louth
Once July comes we need rain nearly every day to hold growth. With the current weather forecast, we will be extremely tight towards the end of next week. Through learning over the year, we hold June cover as high as we can to try and carry us over a dry spell like this, and we thankfully have a decent cover heading in to it.
I had also been topping up paddocks frequently with fertiliser whenever there was some moisture there.
Clean-outs on paddocks have been excellent and stock are very content with the warm, settled weather for now.
I will look to cut second-cut silage now this week or else it will just start wilting away in this heat. While fertiliser and slurry is only out four and a half weeks, growth has been excellent. We will test for nitrates pre-cutting.
System Suckler to beef
Soil type Variable
Farm cover (kg/DM/ha) 845
Growth (kg/DM/ha/day) 79
Demand (kg/DM/ha/day) 68
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