Grass

Growth rates for the coming week are expected to be greater than 40kg/ha/day on many farms around the country. This is close to magic day on most farms, and therefore farmers need to be planning to reduce supplement quickly or else be faced with having too much grass later this month.

Ground conditions are still difficult on some farms and this is a constraint, especially after more rain on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Farmers that are a long way from finishing the first rotation will need to come up with a plan to avoid getting into a big surplus scenario in April. Too much grass in April is bad for grass quality, and this will affect milk yield and protein per cent.

They will need to start closing up some paddocks for silage now to ensure they are back in the second round grass by mid-April, or earlier. Others have already commenced grazing the second rotation.

At the farm walk in Cork on Monday, the host was alternating between first and second round grass day and night to avoid having too much lush grass in the diet.

Breeding

With weeks to go before breeding starts, there are a few last minute tasks that need to be done. The first and most important is to assess cow body condition score (BCS).

Those that are thin – less than 2.75 BCS, or under pressure for some other reason will need to be put on once a day milking. In most situations no more than 5-10% of the herd will be in this category, and it could even be less this year as cows are generally in good BCS after a good February.

Put tape on their tails and don’t milk them in the evening. Next thing to keep an eye on is the mineral status of the herd. My attitude to minerals is if it’s not broken, then don’t fix it.

So if fertility and milk production is good, you probably don’t have an issue. Where there are issues, mineral deficiency could be part of the problem, but unlikely to be the whole solution. Blood samples from a representative group of cows can be taken and a mineral analysis carried out which will tell you any immediate deficiencies.

Similarly, grass samples from the second rotation can be taken prior to cows going into the field. They can be frozen, bulked together and a sample sent away in May for analysis. The thing to remember is if minerals aren’t deficient, adding more of them won’t give any return.

Clover

White clover seed from the Irish recommended lists is in short supply. It looks like there will be enough seed for use as part of grass seed mixtures, but it will be hard to get on its own for those looking to oversow.

Some suppliers will be selling blends of recommended and non-recommended list varieties and these are fairly OK, with the non-recommended list varieties tested in the UK system and performing well.

The key advice when oversowing is to do no more than one or two paddocks per year, with the best results achieved from oversowing in April. Subsequently grazing at low covers will help ensure that light gets to the base of the sward where the new clover seedling will be emerging.