Grass growth

Rainfall amounts have been hit and miss in most places, ranging from zero to 40mm over the past seven days, depending on location. Average grass growth rates on PastureBase are still OK at around 52kg/day and demand is similar with average farm cover at slightly over 200kg/cow. All of these metrics are OK, so generally, farmers needn’t panic. Of course within this, there are some cases where farms are very short of grass and corrective action is required.

Where growth has dropped and little rain has fallen and average farm cover is at risk of dropping below 160kg to 170kg/cow, then extra supplement should be introduced to slow down the rotation length to 20 to 25 days until growth recovers. Farmers that haven’t got rain yet but are OK for grass should continue to be conservative and avoid cutting paddocks for silage or topping. Farmers that are OK for grass and have got rain should expect to get strong growth from next week on, so should be reducing all supplement and preparing for surpluses.

Meal

Many farmers have had to feed extra meal this summer to deal with grass shortages, particularly in the midlands, east and north-east. Some are close to feeding the same amount of meal now as they did in all of 2020. With grass growth set to improve, there should be an opportunity to cut back on meal for the rest of the year, particularly on farms that were worst affected by the dry spell. There is usually a good bounce in grass growth for a number of months after a dry spell, which will hopefully mean growth will be good in August and September, meaning farmers can achieve closing cover targets without too much supplement having to be fed.

Cow flow

Most batch meal feeders don’t generally allow for less than 0.8kg of meal to be fed at a time, whereas more precision meal feeders allow for a trickle of meal to be fed, which may help with cow flow. With the high cost of meal and (hopefully) plenty of grass around in a few weeks, many farmers are thinking about cutting out meal altogether. Those that routinely do this say it makes for a more pleasant milking experience. Cow flow needs to be good and more often than not, this is down to the people rather than the facilities. In other words, good facilities but poor stockmanship won’t lead to good cow flow. Backing gates should only be used to make the yard smaller, not to push cows. Shouting and banging may encourage cows to leave the parlour quicker, but won’t encourage cows to walk into the parlour, which is the main issue when no meal is being fed. Putting cows on 12 hour breaks is another option, but unless allocations are spot on, it can lead to underperformance among younger cows.

The key is to avoid shouting and banging and to avoid leaving the pit to go out and bring in cows, as what tends to happen is that cows back away when they see the milker leave the pit. Not having full rows and leaving some clusters hanging up will require a change of mindset, but should lead to faster milkings, even if that means more rows are milked.