Grazing: We got a reprieve from heavy rain over the last couple of days, but heavy showers earlier in the week ended the grazing season for many farmers. The bad news is there is more rain forecast for the weekend and into next week. There is still a good bit of grass around on many farms, but getting the conditions to graze it is the challenge. In some cases, it will be a blessing in disguise and enable higher than normal covers to be carried over for the winter – and hopefully to be available for the cows next spring.

Grazing is still going ahead on drier land. The risk here is taking out too much ground and being left tight for the spring. Remember, spring grass is worth twice as much as winter grass. The benefits in terms of cow health and reduced workload are immense – that is worth more than money.

Target closing covers have been edging upwards in recent years, as stocking rates increase and cows calve more compactly. On the majority of farms, the ideal closing cover is between 700-900kg/ha on 1 December. This means you can afford to go a bit lower than this now, if you intend to stop grazing in a week or 10 days’ time.

Depending on soil type, some “wet paddocks” will be drier now than they will be next spring, so it might be a good idea to get these whipped off and to the bottom of the wedge. To reduce demand, some farmers are housing a portion of cows full-time, while leaving the rest at grass. They find this easier to manage than feeding all cows silage at once.

Silage: Cows milking indoors will need good-quality silage. Where silage is up around the 70% DMD mark, very little meal will be required for cows milking 14-16l/cow/day. There is an opportunity to make more money where silage is good by feeding less meal. It is where silage is poorer-quality that milk yield will drop and meal will become more important. The economics of feeding anything more than 3kg/day to cows in late lactation will need to be carefully assessed. While good-quality silage is important now, it is probably more important for feeding to freshly calved cows next spring, during wet spells or as a supplement to grass. Depending on soil type and stocking rate, many farmers like to have 1.5-2 bales of good-quality silage per cow for the spring. Don’t use up all your good bales this backend at the expense of next spring – set aside the bales for use in spring.

BioFarm 2020: There is an online conference running all of next week called ‘BioFarm: Ireland’s biological farming conference’. Biological farming or regenerative farming is getting more attention in recent years. The premise of regenerative farming is that a lot of the inputs farmers apply are unnecessary or already available in nature, if soils are managed a certain way. The organisers of this years’ virtual event have secured world-renowned speakers who are global experts in this area. Tickets cost €50 to €80 and ticketholders can watch presentations back later. Tickets are available from the National Organic Training Skillnet.