Heavy rain and much cooler weather has become the norm around the country, which is having an impact on grazing and grass growth. Since last week, most days have seen heavy showers of rain and air temperatures are averaging 8-10ºC by day with some frost in places at night.

On the heavy farms in the west, many have taken the decision to house cows to avoid doing damage to paddocks. Otherwise, dry farms are holding up well so far and cows are out grazing. Today (Wednesday) is dry, but rain is on the way again and is going to be around all weekend. On drier farms, on very wet days, it might be best to leave the cows in rather than doing damage to the paddock. But if ground conditions allow, on/off grazing is best, as cows will graze 80% of what they need in a few hours.

Grass growths recorded on our Grasswatch farms range from 19-30kg DM/ha/day. In mid-Clare, our farmer has an average farm cover of 1,093kg DM/ha and a growth rate of 21kg DM/ha/day. Cows are entering pre-grazing yields of 1,650kg DM/ha.

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They will be going into the last paddock tomorrow and the farm will be closed after that. He got 33mm of rain over the week. Cows are milking 13 litres at 4.68% fat, 4.11% protein and 269 SCC on 4kg of concentrates.

Our south Tipperary farmer has a growth rate of 27kg DM/ha/day and a demand of 51kg DM/ha/day.

His demand next week will reduce to 35kg DM/ha because he is drying off and selling cull cows. Cows are milking 12.5 litres at 4.75% fat and 3.85% protein (1.1kg MS). His average farm cover is 810kg DM/ha.

In southwest Wexford, our farmer has an average farm cover of 732kg DM/ha with a stocking rate of 2.16 LU/ha. He has three heavy covers to graze that are on heavy ground. He housed cows on Monday night to let land dry out. They are out grazing again until the rain comes, but he is feeding silage and 1.5kg of meal to ease demand. Growth rate this week is 28kg DM/ha. He is avoiding damaging land and is housing the heifers now. He will house the weanlings and cows in 10 days. He aims to close paddocks with an average farm cover of 650kg DM/ha by 14 November.

STEVEN FITZGERALD, farm manager, TEAGASC CURTIN’S RESEARCH FARM

There is about a week of grass left here for cows. We have two out of 18 paddocks remaining and cows are grazing one of these. The paddock the cows are in has a cover of 1,700kg DM/ha and the last one has a cover of 2,000kg DM/ha. Growth rates are holding strong at 40kg DM/ha/day and demand is 25kg DM/ha/day. Grass dry matter is 14% this week. The average farm cover (AFC) is 786kg DM/ha (440kg DM/cow), which is very low for this farm. It is 100kg behind what I would like for this time of year and that has been the trend for the past few weeks. The slow growth rate at the end of August and September has caused this poor AFC. Next year, we will look into building grass earlier. Our stocking rate is 1.85 LU/ha, down from 2.96 LU/ha since we dried off the early-calving cows. Cows were dried off abruptly and we used Cepravin dry cow tube and Boviseal. Two cows that had bad quarters during the year got an antibiotic tube before drying off as well. The dry cows were put on a diet of 7kg straw and 3kg silage for the first five days dry. They are now back on a baled silage-only diet. The remaining cows out on grass are milking 13.8 litres at 5.7% fat, 4.48% protein (1.44kg MS), 4.52% lactose and 160 SCC. They are on a diet of 14kg grass and 3kg concentrates. They will be dried off in late November, which will suit well because I am off to get married.

DONAL PATTON, FARM MANAGER, BALLYHAISE RESEARCH FARM

Getting wet here over last week, 25mm rain over the weekend. Our farm cover is 825kg and growth is still above average for the time of year at 25kg. We are grazing covers of 2,400kg, but only have half a paddock of this is left, then it’s back into 1,700kg. We house cows at night since the weekend, as they were doing too much damage. We would have finished grazing on 10 November as planned, but we will probably stretch to 15 November because cows were housed at night. We were feeding 3kg of concentrate, 7kg of baled silage and 7kg of grass. The plan is to get them back out on the dry nights this week to get more area closed. We have sold cull cows and dried off five thin cows and two lame cows, so this has reduced demand to 35kg DM/ha/day. The paddocks grazed on 1 October have covers of 1,100-1,200kg so we will have to carry a few paddocks that were grazed earlier (26 September) to have a closing cover of 600kg DM/ha. We brought in the in-calf heifers last week and weighed them. The Friesian heifers averaged 471kg and the crossbreds averaged 437kg. We picked out eight heifers under target and they are getting 2kg of concentrate and bale silage. Cows are milking 11.2 litres at 5.17% fat, 4.09% protein, (1.06kg MS) 4.55% lactose and 330 SCC. We had a case of mastitis and there are two more persistently high SCC cows to be dried off.

Mick Magan, Killashee, Co Longford

We have grown 18.5t of dry matter to date. This is more than the entire amount of grass we grew in 2013 (18t). All 164 cows are still milking. I have a very high stocking rate of 4.5LU/ha, but am able to handle this by buffer-feeding cows from 15 October, which helps build average farm cover. The AFC is currently 1,186kg DM/ha (264kg DM/cow). The wet weather is starting to cause issues and utilisation has dropped by 5%. Cows are in by night since the last week of October and are getting silage and 2kg of distillers. They also get 2kg of a 16% nut in the parlour. To date, 70% of the area has been grazed. The regrowths on paddocks closed have been huge, and paddocks reseeded this year that were closed have a cover of 1,400kg DM/ha already. I don’t have quota issues because I came from winter milk production. This year, cows have produced 500kg of milk solids per head and got 950kg of concentrates. Cows will start calving from the third week of January, so I need to have good covers of grass early on. That is why I plan on having a closing AFC of 750kg DM/ha. This year, I have made 25% extra silage. Even with my very high stocking rate I was able to take out strong paddocks. Our Holstein Friesian herd is milking 16.5 litres, at 4.6% fat and 3.55% protein (1.35kg MS).

Declan Flynn, Kilmallock, Co Limerick

I have all the cows dried off since Tuesday for quota reasons. Cows are still out grazing and ground conditions are good. Last Thursday, my average farm cover was 850kg DM/ha and the growth rate was 41kg DM/ha/day. My plan is to graze the farm down to an average farm cover of 600kg DM/ha and I will aim to have covers of 1,000kg DM/ha near the parlour for calved cows next spring. This should mean cows have another three weeks grazing. This year, I milked 140, next year I plan on increasing to 160 cows. I dried off the cows in batches. The first cows to be dried were empty cows (12% of the herd), the second batch were early-calvers and then everything else. The empty cows have been put in the slatted shed and have been put on a diet of silage and beef ration. They started off on 3kg of ration and I plan to increase this to 5kg/head in December so they should be fit to sell in mid-January. I reseeded land on 23 August the grass started to emerge soon after seeding, but the dry weather in September brought growth to a halt. It is coming on well now and hopefully dry weather will come next week so I can get it grazed to help tillering. Last August, in-calf heifers weighed 430kg and weanling heifers were 160kg. This year, cows produced 430kg of milk solids on just 550kg concentrates. If quota wasn’t an issue I would have produced more.