There was a nice fall of rain in some parts of the country the last week and just at the right time, as ground was starting to dry out. The west receiving the majority, ranging from 15mm-60mm, but the south and southeast only received 13mm and 7mm, respectively. This rain should help keep the grass moving, with growth predictions for the week averaging 63kg DM/ha for large parts of the country.
There was a nice fall of rain in some parts of the country the last week and just at the right time, as ground was starting to dry out.
The west receiving the majority, ranging from 15mm-60mm, but the south and southeast only received 13mm and 7mm, respectively. This rain should help keep the grass moving, with growth predictions for the week averaging 63kg DM/ha for large parts of the country.
Putting a plan together this month for ensuring a longer grazing season will pay dividends.
When to start building covers will depend on the stocking rate. The higher your stocking rate and the drier your farm, the earlier you will need to build. Farms stocked at 3 LU/ha plus for the remainder of the year will want to look at building covers from next week on.
This means having a cover/LU of close to 250kg DM/ha next week, building to 330kg DM/ha for 1 September, giving an average farm cover of 990kg DM/ha by that point.
Lower stocked farms (those stocked around 2.5 LU/ha) don’t need to start building grass until after mid-August.
The target is to maintain the grass cover/LU at 180-220kg/ha, building to 300kg DM/ha by 1 September.
There are several ways to build up grass:
Reduce stocking rate by selling cull cows and drying off very poor yielders. There might also be silage ground or reseeded ground that could come back into the rotation.Introduce meal – an expensive option but will be necessary with high stocking rates. A grass budget will tell you when to start. An alternative to meal is good quality round bales. Get your August nitrogen out early, as you will get a better response than leaving it too late. Protect regrowths by not having cattle or cull cows grazing after cows or spending more than 24 hours in each paddock.Be generous in allocating grass due to low dry matter. With lush and damp conditions bloat could arise – graze grass clover paddocks of >1,000kg DM/ha, introduce bloat oil and a source of roughage.Time is running out in setting fodder crops for the winter. A grass budget should be done in the next week or so to help extend the 2024 grazing season.Ed Payne – Tulsk, Co Roscommon
It’s been a very challenging year. Grass grown and cow performance is back on this time last year. The farm is very dry for being in the west of the country, so hopefully the back end of the year will be favourable for us.
Grass quality now is very good. Cows are very content grazing covers of 1,350-1,400kg DM/ha, with very good clean outs.
We plan to blanket spread the whole farm with protected urea in 10 days, before we start to build covers for the autumn. Breeding has gone well with very few repeats showing.
We’ve no scan done yet, but a lot of meal was fed, so we’re hoping this helped with conception.
Stocking Rate (cow/ha) 3.72
Growth Rate (kg/day) 68
Average Farm Cover (kg/cow) 174
Yield (l/cow) 20.8
Fat% 4.61
Protein% 3.96
Milk Solids (kg/cow) 1.84
Concentrates 3
Eddie Keogh – Monamolin, Co Wexford
We got 6-7ml of rain over the weekend, but I don’t think it was enough to really drive grass on. We offloaded 18 cows about a month ago to reduce our stocking rate, but we are still stocked very high.
There was only a two week period throughout the year that we were able to reduce the concentrate being fed.
In a normal year I would get grass quality right in June and July by topping and pre-mowing, but this would have slowed down growth even more, so it’s only over the last two rotations that I’ve corrected quality.
One quarter of second cut silage was zero grazed back into the cows to help build up covers.
Stocking Rate (cow/ha) 4.3
Growth Rate (kg/day) 50
Average Farm Cover (kg/cow) 216
Yield (l/cow) 21.5
Fat% 4.72
Protein% 4.21
Milk Solids (kg/cow) 1.98
Concentrates 6
Niall O’Loughlin – Nurney, Co Kildare
Growth is back from 78kg DM/ha the last week to 41kg DM/ha this week. Demand is running at 62kg DM/ha, but we will monitor it closely to ensure cover doesn’t drop too much.
We’re following the cows with 20 units of CAN plus sulphur. No reseeding was done this year as a lot of the farm has been reseeded over the last few years.
We felt that it was a very difficult year to get some reseeding done anyway.
We are going at our second cut of silage this week. Two or three paddocks that need to be cleaned up will be cut and pitted as well.
We should have enough fodder to see us through the winter then.
Stocking Rate (cow/ha) 3.6
Growth Rate (kg/day) 52
Average Farm Cover (kg/cow) 199
Yield (l/cow) 20.5
Fat% 4.35
Protein% 3.70
Milk Solids (kg/cow) 1.7
Concentrates 2.5
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