The harsh, biting wind of the last few days won’t do much for grass growth, particularly not on farms that have little or no nitrogen spread to date or grazing completed up to mid-March.

That’s the reality in many parts of the country, where it was just too wet to graze or travel the land during February and most of March.

The good news is that, in most cases, there is a lot of grass available on these farms, so there is no risk of them running out of grass any time soon.

Risk

However, the risk for these farmers is being tight of grass in two weeks’ time as the pre-grazing yields on the paddocks in the first rotation will be high, while it will be low in the second rotation.

This is a very difficult situation to manage. Basically, they will need to continue to monitor the pre-grazing yields on the second rotation and be ready to move to there when there is a cover of 1,100kg to 1,200kg/ha.

You want to avoid having a demand set at more than 50kg for early April

Depending on how much of the first rotation is to be skipped for silage, farmers should consider cutting some paddocks for silage now. Essentially, you want to avoid having a demand set at more than 50kg for early April, as April growth is extremely variable.

You can calculate demand by multiplying the stocking rate by the expected grass allowance.

For example, if you have 2.5 cows calved per hectare of milking platform and the cows are being fed 3kg of meal, you would expect the demand to be in the region of 35kg/ha.

This means that growth needs to be 35kg/day for there to be no change to average farm cover. That’s the average amount of grass on every hectare.

This figure should be around 500kg/ha in early April, so some farmers will have scope to let this run down by setting their demand higher than their growth.

The key message is to walk your farm weekly and assess the cover of grass on every paddock.

Farmers will notice that cows are getting longer out of paddocks than presumed, as dry matter is very high and there’s high feed value in grass.

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