The last time John Curtis or his neighbours in Adamstown, Co Wexford received any meaningful rainfall was 5 May. That’s almost 60 days ago and the lack of rain has caused a serious drought in the area, and all along the eastern seaboard. You could say that this part of Ireland is about two weeks ahead of the rest of the country when it comes to drought.
The Irish Farmers Journal visited John on Monday evening. The cows were grazing the field next to the yard. What they were grazing wasn’t much. The pre-grazing yield at the moment is about 500kg. This is made up of very short leafy grass and then long, thin and sparse seed heads. From a distance it looks like a decent cover, but walk into it and you’re instantly disappointed.
It’s not the first time this year that John or his farm is under pressure. The high rainfall in February and the snow and low growth rates in March and April were hard to deal with. John ran out of silage in March. Cows went out grazing for short stints almost every day but damage was done. This damage is very evident now with clay humps and hollows in most of the dry fields as these were the ones that were grazed most in the wet weather.
The herd grazing on Monday night.
John’s farm is in two sections. The larger section around the yard is nearly all grazed and the cows are going across the road next. He reckons there’s about eight days of grass ahead of them.
“The field the cows are going into next was grazed 20 days ago, I know this because the discussion group was here that day. I spread a bag of 18:6:12 after grazing but it’s still sitting on the ground. The thing is though, when these fields are grazed there will be nothing coming back on them, zero. There’s nothing coming back on what was grazed over the last 10 days.” John says.
Even getting eight days out of what “high” covers are left is a fair challenge. The herd is on 6kg of meal per day, 5kg of soya hulls per day and John opened up two round bales of silage on Monday too. They get the soya hulls and the silage at the feed face of the shed before they come in for milking.
John and his wife Pauline are milking 148 cows and rearing 46 heifers on their 69 hectare farm. There are 45.6 hectares on the milking block giving a stocking rate of 3.25 cows/ha and an overall stocking rate of 2.85 cows/ha. John’s father Mouge and 12 year old Conor are a big help on the farm, but other than that it’s a one man band.
Summer holidays have been booked so putting a simple plan in place for when he is away is top of John’s agenda now.
Feed
John has 40 acres of second cut silage closed on an outside farm since late May. It has a cover of about 1,000kg on it but John hasn’t fed it yet because he knows he will need it next winter. He says the pit of silage from the first cut is a lot smaller than it was last year. Grass for the heifers and calves has all but disappeared so their area has been tightened up, the heifers are being fed hay and he’s giving seven acres of silage ground to the calves.
John bought 100 square bales of hay (6’x18”x2’8”) last week with the plan to feed them to dry cows next winter. The hay is excellent quality having been reseeded last year and cost €20/bale. He also bought about 50 round bales of silage which he started feeding out on Monday. These bales are very well preserved but have poorer quality grass species in them. On top of the hay and silage he is also buying straights, with soya hulls tipped in the shed and a load of palm kernel delivered on Tuesday. The meal being fed in the parlour is a 16% protein nut.
Considering the bad spring and the lack of grass now, the cows are looking incredibly well with a super shine and condition on them. They are milking 25.5l at 4.07% fat and 3.63% protein or 2.02kg MS. The breeding season appears to have gone well with very few repeats.
John was feeding bale silage but is going to start feeding pit silage next
Options
It’s highly likely that in eight days’ time John’s average farm cover will be somewhere around 150kg/ha with this cover of grass on nearly every paddock. John measures grass but hasn’t done a proper farm walk in two weeks’ as he knows there is very little growth and has switched to giving a set area per day to stretch out the round.
There are three big issues on the farm. Obviously, the first is that grass growth and farm cover has plummeted. The second is that forage is scarce – he doesn’t have a bank of good quality surplus silage to feed. In John’s eyes, any forage being fed now is being robbed from the winter. The other big issue is that whatever plan he implements it needs to be simple to operate.
We discussed the options available. Basically, the amount of grass in the diet is going to fall off a cliff in the next week. Cows need to be fed and the most amount of meal or concentrate you can give them is 10kg/day and even this has to be fed in three or more feeds. The rest of the diet needs to be made up of forage and in John’s case, there is no forage on the farm that he’s happy to feed.
There is 16 hectares of second cut silage with a cover of about 1,000kg/ha giving a total of 16t of feed. A local contractor could zero graze this back to John’s yard at a cost of about €60/load which would work out at 6c/kgDM presuming there’s 1t of dry matter in the load. This is on top of the cost of growing the grass. But the quality in this grass is very poor, with a lot of the leaf area having dissipated in the heat.
He has three other forage options on farm; the hay, bale silage and pit silage. For me, the bale silage is the poorest quality of all three. Because the hay he bought is excellent quality it could be fed to the milking cows. High quality hay is the exception rather than the rule though. In the end, John decided to open up the pit silage and start feeding this along with what grass is in the field and then supplement the rest of the diet with meals.
When the grass runs out he will increase the amount of silage being fed. This will still be fed in the shed, but he has the option of feeding the palm kernel ad lib through a bale feeder trailer out in the field. One of his neighbours is currently doing this and moving the trailer around after the cows. John has 20 paddocks on the farm so could maintain a 20 day round length by moving the cows every day.
There’s no easy solution facing farmers like John Curtis, but a positive outlook and a good support network is keeping him and others like him going. The thing is, with no change in the weather forecast, the issues currently facing farmers in the east will spread to other areas so people should put contingency plans in place for feed and water shortages.
Read more
Dairy management: dealing with drought
Greenfield: 'water is gold at the moment'
The last time John Curtis or his neighbours in Adamstown, Co Wexford received any meaningful rainfall was 5 May. That’s almost 60 days ago and the lack of rain has caused a serious drought in the area, and all along the eastern seaboard. You could say that this part of Ireland is about two weeks ahead of the rest of the country when it comes to drought.
The Irish Farmers Journal visited John on Monday evening. The cows were grazing the field next to the yard. What they were grazing wasn’t much. The pre-grazing yield at the moment is about 500kg. This is made up of very short leafy grass and then long, thin and sparse seed heads. From a distance it looks like a decent cover, but walk into it and you’re instantly disappointed.
It’s not the first time this year that John or his farm is under pressure. The high rainfall in February and the snow and low growth rates in March and April were hard to deal with. John ran out of silage in March. Cows went out grazing for short stints almost every day but damage was done. This damage is very evident now with clay humps and hollows in most of the dry fields as these were the ones that were grazed most in the wet weather.
The herd grazing on Monday night.
John’s farm is in two sections. The larger section around the yard is nearly all grazed and the cows are going across the road next. He reckons there’s about eight days of grass ahead of them.
“The field the cows are going into next was grazed 20 days ago, I know this because the discussion group was here that day. I spread a bag of 18:6:12 after grazing but it’s still sitting on the ground. The thing is though, when these fields are grazed there will be nothing coming back on them, zero. There’s nothing coming back on what was grazed over the last 10 days.” John says.
Even getting eight days out of what “high” covers are left is a fair challenge. The herd is on 6kg of meal per day, 5kg of soya hulls per day and John opened up two round bales of silage on Monday too. They get the soya hulls and the silage at the feed face of the shed before they come in for milking.
John and his wife Pauline are milking 148 cows and rearing 46 heifers on their 69 hectare farm. There are 45.6 hectares on the milking block giving a stocking rate of 3.25 cows/ha and an overall stocking rate of 2.85 cows/ha. John’s father Mouge and 12 year old Conor are a big help on the farm, but other than that it’s a one man band.
Summer holidays have been booked so putting a simple plan in place for when he is away is top of John’s agenda now.
Feed
John has 40 acres of second cut silage closed on an outside farm since late May. It has a cover of about 1,000kg on it but John hasn’t fed it yet because he knows he will need it next winter. He says the pit of silage from the first cut is a lot smaller than it was last year. Grass for the heifers and calves has all but disappeared so their area has been tightened up, the heifers are being fed hay and he’s giving seven acres of silage ground to the calves.
John bought 100 square bales of hay (6’x18”x2’8”) last week with the plan to feed them to dry cows next winter. The hay is excellent quality having been reseeded last year and cost €20/bale. He also bought about 50 round bales of silage which he started feeding out on Monday. These bales are very well preserved but have poorer quality grass species in them. On top of the hay and silage he is also buying straights, with soya hulls tipped in the shed and a load of palm kernel delivered on Tuesday. The meal being fed in the parlour is a 16% protein nut.
Considering the bad spring and the lack of grass now, the cows are looking incredibly well with a super shine and condition on them. They are milking 25.5l at 4.07% fat and 3.63% protein or 2.02kg MS. The breeding season appears to have gone well with very few repeats.
John was feeding bale silage but is going to start feeding pit silage next
Options
It’s highly likely that in eight days’ time John’s average farm cover will be somewhere around 150kg/ha with this cover of grass on nearly every paddock. John measures grass but hasn’t done a proper farm walk in two weeks’ as he knows there is very little growth and has switched to giving a set area per day to stretch out the round.
There are three big issues on the farm. Obviously, the first is that grass growth and farm cover has plummeted. The second is that forage is scarce – he doesn’t have a bank of good quality surplus silage to feed. In John’s eyes, any forage being fed now is being robbed from the winter. The other big issue is that whatever plan he implements it needs to be simple to operate.
We discussed the options available. Basically, the amount of grass in the diet is going to fall off a cliff in the next week. Cows need to be fed and the most amount of meal or concentrate you can give them is 10kg/day and even this has to be fed in three or more feeds. The rest of the diet needs to be made up of forage and in John’s case, there is no forage on the farm that he’s happy to feed.
There is 16 hectares of second cut silage with a cover of about 1,000kg/ha giving a total of 16t of feed. A local contractor could zero graze this back to John’s yard at a cost of about €60/load which would work out at 6c/kgDM presuming there’s 1t of dry matter in the load. This is on top of the cost of growing the grass. But the quality in this grass is very poor, with a lot of the leaf area having dissipated in the heat.
He has three other forage options on farm; the hay, bale silage and pit silage. For me, the bale silage is the poorest quality of all three. Because the hay he bought is excellent quality it could be fed to the milking cows. High quality hay is the exception rather than the rule though. In the end, John decided to open up the pit silage and start feeding this along with what grass is in the field and then supplement the rest of the diet with meals.
When the grass runs out he will increase the amount of silage being fed. This will still be fed in the shed, but he has the option of feeding the palm kernel ad lib through a bale feeder trailer out in the field. One of his neighbours is currently doing this and moving the trailer around after the cows. John has 20 paddocks on the farm so could maintain a 20 day round length by moving the cows every day.
There’s no easy solution facing farmers like John Curtis, but a positive outlook and a good support network is keeping him and others like him going. The thing is, with no change in the weather forecast, the issues currently facing farmers in the east will spread to other areas so people should put contingency plans in place for feed and water shortages.
Read more
Dairy management: dealing with drought
Greenfield: 'water is gold at the moment'
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