Clever paddocks in Co Louth

One of the many excuses used by the anti-paddock brigade is the inconvenience that the extra infrastructure brings when the silage harvester comes out – more gaps to negotiate, more strips that the blades can’t get to and tighter turns. Cost is the other peeve of paddock-sceptics, though many drystock farmers will say it’s the best money they’ve spent. This spring, one of our northeastern BETTER farmers looks to have overcome both of these issues with a clever adaptation of his grazing area.

Martin O’Hare farms 60ha (42ha of grassland and 18ha of tillage) of free-draining land near Dundalk in Co Louth. A full-time farmer, he calved 70 suckler cows in 2016 but plans to hit the 100-cow mark in the coming years in order to keep the stocking rate high as the farm’s livestock element grows. After a difficult few years for tillage, more tillage ground was put into grass in 2016 and even more will be in 2017.

Extra grass

“None of our progeny see a second winter post-weaning here, so I’m very conscious that I need to squeeze up cow numbers to make use of this extra grass. The tillage situation is frustrating and we’re doing relatively well at the beef. I feel I can push things a bit further and the split-calving definitely helps from both labour and cashflow points of view. I’m lucky here in that the home block was set in paddocks as a dairy grazing platform once upon a time. However, there are some big open fields on it and my other blocks (farm is split in three) that I need to split up going forward,” Martin said.

One of the fields in question is a 16ac silage field which sits at the bottom of Martin’s home block (Picture 1). It is an important silage source for Martin, but as his stocking rate grows he also needs to be able to graze it relatively intensively when necessary. In a decent spring, Martin’s farm is ideal for early turnout. He begins calving in January and finishes up in mid-March so he has both young stock and cows with calves for early grass. Martin also likes keeping his sucklers at home, where roadways better facilitate AI breeding than on his outfarms.

The BETTER farm team identified this 16ac field as Martin’s perfect go-to for cows and calves in the spring – the land being good enough to graze out prior to a targeted early-April close-up date for first-cut silage. However, like most Irish fields, the water point was tucked away in a corner and the only permanent fences ran along three of the perimeter ditches. Work was needed, though the team was conscious that this was a silage field first and foremost and had to devise a way of splitting the area and introducing more water points in a cost-effective but practical manner.

Permanent split

The decision was made to introduce one permanent split down the centre of the field. What was unique about this split, however, was the fact that the strainer posts are located about 45ft out from the ditches. This allows the silage harvester to do the field’s headlands without having to negotiate fences. Two strands of temporary wire connect the strainer posts to the perimeter fence. Two water troughs were purchased and installed along the central splitter fence in such a way that each trough serves four paddocks – the field is now split into eight grazing areas. Pipe was run underground to the centre of the field and overground thereafter.

The team felt it unnecessary to erect any more permanent wires in the field. Instead, Martin uses geared temporary reels to allocate his paddocks. Thus far Martin is using two geared reels that follow the group around the block. However, purchasing a third is advisable to make moving paddocks easier.

Silage

“There have been 27 cows and their calves on that field for the past 18 days [up to 1 April]. Today will probably be their last day and it’ll be closed up for silage now. If needs be we can go back into parts of it in the coming weeks. I’m seeing a great response to the urea I spread. In the past it was a case of letting cattle run the whole lot for a quick grazing before silage. Now that it’s split up I’m able to get much more from it.”

A full breakdown of the costs involved in setting up the silage field for grazing are presented above. In total, Martin has spent €850.

The team are looking at similar cheap options to paddock fields on Martin’s outfarms, many of which are former tillage fields and thus unfenced.

When walking the farm we saw this was an excellent dry field, which had potential to grow a lot of grass throughout the year. We evaluated the different options for best dividing the field in order to maximise grass utilisation at the shoulders of the year when grass is of high value, while also remaining conscious that this was a silage field – we did not want it to be split into too many small divisions. We decided on one permanent fence to split the field in two, with the straining post located 45ft from the boundary to allow the headland to be easily harvested at silage time. Two water troughs were strategically placed along the division to allow the field to be subdivided into eight paddocks using temporary fences, which allows Martin to get a good clean out of all grass before closing up. This will help with his 2017 silage quality, as all dead material is now easily removed from the sward.