I don’t think any farm in Ireland has escaped the rain of the past fortnight. With the exception of the southeast, rainfall levels are between three and four times the norm for the time of year.

While those on free-draining land have been able to cope reasonably well by using on/off grazing, many other herds have had to be fully housed.

Whether cows have been on grass full-time, part-time or not at all, it’s tough on them.

Keeping them in on silage won’t help. Remember, silage is low in energy, protein and digestibility. While their stomachs might be full when eating silage, their overall diet will be deficient from an energy and protein point of view unless a very high level of meal feeding is carried out. In this case, a high level of meal feeding is probably over 8kg of nuts per day – which is madness if you want to make money from farming.

Feeding more meal will cost you more money and cows will probably milk more and not gain body condition. Feeding more grass is a much better option

So naturally, when cows are in on silage, their milk production (protein percent) and/or body condition score will suffer.

At least where cows are getting grass into them they are eating a high-energy, high-protein and very digestible feed. But then when ground is wet, utilisation suffers. Bad weather is bad.

The forecast for the next seven days is good. It will be mostly dry with scattered, misty showers and much milder air temperatures.

Getting back into a good regime

Getting cows back into a good grazing regime should be the priority on all farms. This will be the best thing you will do to manage body condition score.

Feeding more meal will cost you more money and cows will probably milk more and not gain body condition. Feeding more grass is a much better option.

How much meal to feed depends on the grass situation. Most farms have more grass than they can graze. Magic day is less than three weeks away; after that the farm will be growing more than the herd can eat.

I don’t think there’s any justification for feeding more than 2kg of meal where grass is plentiful.

Those that have been grazing hard for the past six weeks will be tighter for grass as they have eaten into their average farm cover. This is a good position to be in as it means you have utilised a lot of grass and will have good quality grass in the next rotations.

For these farmers, how much meal to feed depends on how far away you are from starting the second rotation and what the cover is on the first grazed paddocks. There should be at least 1,000kg on them when it comes to grazing them.

When to start the second rotation depends on stocking rate. If the right cover is on the paddocks and stocking rate is reasonable (less than 2.7 cows/ha) then I don’t see anything wrong with starting on 1 April.

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