February really proved to be a ‘Fool’s Spring’, and even after things seemed to be changing in early April we received another bout of bad weather to set things back again.
Thankfully, we now seem to be in a settled spell of weather, which has helped to really drive growth rates.
The transition from first rotation to second is probably the most critical period, and can easily go wrong for farmers.
There seems to be plenty of grass on farms, between talking to farmers and from the PatureBase data. The real difficulty will be in managing grass to prevent it from becoming too strong, resulting in lower energy feed and poorer graze outs.
The first port of call to controlling grass will be to reduce meal intake in cows.
A lot of farmers are still feeding up to 4kg, and in a time when milk price is falling monthly and growth is good the value of this extra feed needs scrutinising.
Any of the first round now remaining should be skipped and taken out as silage. Weekly grass walks, or ideally twice weekly, are a necessity to assess covers.
Some farmers choose to take out smaller blocks for long term silage as a way of artificially increasing stocking rate, while other will take out paddocks weekly; it’s a matter of choice.
While some see surplus bales as being high cost, what they are in reality is a cost saver through controlling the grass ahead of cows and equally improving yields.
In periods of wet weather like we had in March, or in drought conditions, you also very rarely hear tell of ‘expensive surplus bales’.
Tommie Devine – Frenchpark, Co Roscommon
Growth has really taken off. In four days, average growth across the farm was 72kg/day. Our reseeded paddocks from 2022 are pushing on, with covers jumping by 80-100kg a day on those around the 1,000kg mark.
Cows had been in by night until recently with ground conditions, but are out full time now.
Cows are grazing covers of 1,400-1,500kg DM/ha at the minute, but they will be back down to 1,300kg covers by the weekend, as well as meal being reduced to 3kg.
All the milking platform received one bag/acre of urea two weeks ago. We spread some watery slurry on paddocks that were grazed in the past two weeks on Tuesday.
Stocking Rate (cows/ha) 2.7
Growth Rate (kg/day) 72
Average Farm Cover (kg/cow) 271
Yield (l/cow) 24.6
Fat % 4.77
Protein% 3.65
Milk Solids (kg/cow) 2.13
Concentrates 4
Dan McCarthy – Lixnaw, Co Kerry
We’ve gone from tricky ground conditions to skipping paddocks in the space of a week. We skipped the last of the first round and began the second round on 13 April. These skipped paddocks will go in to long term silage to increase the stocking rate and make management easier.
We’ve eight acres of the platform taken out for baling or reseeding. Paddocks to be reseeded have been sprayed off and will be disced and power harrowed before being sown with tetraploids mix and red and white clovers. We will also be stitching clover in to some paddocks this week at a rate of 2kg/acre.
Stocking Rate (cows/ha) 4.2
Growth Rate (kg/day) 56
Average Farm Cover (kg/cow) 184
Yield (l/cow) 25.5
Fat % 5.06
Protein% 3.66
Milk Solids (kg/cow) 2.29
Concentrates 1.5
Donal Patton – Teagasc Ballyhaise, Co Cavan
We’ve had good drying conditions over the last few days leading in to the second round.
We began the second round on 10 April and have 25% of it grazed to date. Demand is at 44, with 2kg of meal.
We have lots of reseeding to do as part of our trial works, with 28% of the platform to be reseeded.
One block is being grazed this week and will be sprayed off, with the other block grazed and sprayed next week to stagger the return of these paddocks back to grazing.
Our stocking rate will increase to 3.8 LU/ha when these are taken out.
Stocking rate (cows/ha) 2.75
Growth Rate (kg/day) 40
Average Farm Cover (kg/cow) 246
Yield (l/cow) 24
Fat % 4.47
Protein% 3.48
Milk Solids (kg/cow) 2
Concentrates 2
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