Grass is now approaching or is at its heading stage, so grass quality may be reduced. It is important to maintain pre-grazing herbage mass between 1,300kg and 1,600kg DM/ha, with high leaf content. Grazing to a 4cm residual will help to maintain grass quality on farms and is very achievable if pre-grazing mass is kept low.
Farmers need to be flexible and paddocks going above 1,600kg DM/ha will have to be cut and baled, unless there is a deficit or impending drought.
The use of the grass wedge can assist grazing management for the mid-season. The crucial aspect of the wedge is to set the demand line at 1,500-1,600kg DM/ha.
Many farms have sufficient grass, but are still supplementing. This week, grass growth is >60kg DM/ha. June is a good month to get the entire discussion group to recalibrate visual assessments.
In the next few weeks, an automated plate meter called the Grasshopper will be launched. This plate meter will automatically store the pre- and post-grazing heights and DM yield measurements.
PastureBase Ireland (PBI) has been in operation for just over two years. Even at this stage, significant trends in grass growth and grazing management are becoming evident from commercial farm data.
PBI is a web-based grassland management tool incorporating a dual function of grassland decision support, while collecting, storing and interpreting a vast quantity of grassland data from farmers in Ireland.
Without measurement of grass covers, grass demand or grass growth, the best decision on how grass can be managed might not be taken. The crucial point on any farm is utilising the feed resource inside the farm gate. Any farmer who is depending on imported feed is leaving themselves very exposed in the current volatile price environment.
To date, PBI farms have experienced higher April grass growth rates (Figure 1) than the previous two years. However, during the first two weeks of May, growth declined, but is now recovering well. Figure 2 shows that ‘magic day’ took place around 6 April on PBI farms.
2015 so far…
Spring 2015 started off with a lot more grass on farms (11%) compared with 2014. A high proportion of this grass has been utilised given the slight increase in grazing stocking rate this year.
Surveys of PBI farms in March and April indicated that spring calving was really compact, with 75% of the respective herds surveyed calved by 1 March and 94% calved by 1 April.
This trend is likely to continue into the future, as the reproductive performance of the national herd is improving.
The importance of having a high farm cover at the start of calving cannot be emphasised enough, so that there is sufficient grass available to get high levels of grass into the freshly calved herd.
Up to 20 May, cumulative grass growth is approximately 0.3t DM/ha ahead of this time last year and 1.0t DM/ha ahead of the same period in 2013.
Only regular grass monitoring and reaction to prevailing grass growth can allow extra grass to be utilised.
Spring grass growth
PBI has highlighted the variation in spring DM which exists on farms across the country.
It has identified farms which have grown >2t DM/ha between 1 January and 10 April, while some farms on the other side of the scale are only achieving 0.6t DM/ha.
What is emerging from PBI is that farms that are not achieving sufficient area grazed in February and March are not getting sufficient grass growth in late March/early April.
A survey of a number of farms revealed that, by the end of February, only 20% of the farm was grazed, which is well behind the target of 30% (grazing conditions were difficult towards the end of February).
On many farms, spring nitrogen (N) application was delayed too long and in some cases, the window for N application was missed. It’s very important that spring N targets are achieved, otherwise farms will not have sufficient grass available in late spring.
Many farmers are very busy with calving in February and maybe N application should be contracted out on more farms to reduce the spring workload.
Data from PBI revealed that there is a strong relationship between the amount of grass grown on farms during the spring period and the annual grazing DM production.
The benefits of early spring grazing can sometimes go unnoticed, but it is an important way of stimulating the farm to grow grass as early as possible in spring.
Performance on farms
In 2014, the average grass DM production on dairy farms was 13.9t/ha, which was a 1.6t/ha increase from the previous year (12.3t/ha – see Figure 3). This was anticipated, as 2014 was a superior year for grass growth.
Looking at annual DM production further, we learned that the range in DM production that existed between dairy farms in 2014 was very large.
Some dairy farms only produced 7.3t/ha, while the top 20 dairy farms on PBI exceeded 16t/ha, with some farms achieving more than 10 grazings from each paddock on the grazing platform.
PastureBase Ireland was created and funded by Dairy Research Ireland, FBD Trust, PastureBase and Teagasc.
Grass is now approaching or is at its heading stage, so grass quality may be reduced. It is important to maintain pre-grazing herbage mass between 1,300kg and 1,600kg DM/ha, with high leaf content. Grazing to a 4cm residual will help to maintain grass quality on farms and is very achievable if pre-grazing mass is kept low.
Farmers need to be flexible and paddocks going above 1,600kg DM/ha will have to be cut and baled, unless there is a deficit or impending drought.
The use of the grass wedge can assist grazing management for the mid-season. The crucial aspect of the wedge is to set the demand line at 1,500-1,600kg DM/ha.
Many farms have sufficient grass, but are still supplementing. This week, grass growth is >60kg DM/ha. June is a good month to get the entire discussion group to recalibrate visual assessments.
In the next few weeks, an automated plate meter called the Grasshopper will be launched. This plate meter will automatically store the pre- and post-grazing heights and DM yield measurements.
PastureBase Ireland (PBI) has been in operation for just over two years. Even at this stage, significant trends in grass growth and grazing management are becoming evident from commercial farm data.
PBI is a web-based grassland management tool incorporating a dual function of grassland decision support, while collecting, storing and interpreting a vast quantity of grassland data from farmers in Ireland.
Without measurement of grass covers, grass demand or grass growth, the best decision on how grass can be managed might not be taken. The crucial point on any farm is utilising the feed resource inside the farm gate. Any farmer who is depending on imported feed is leaving themselves very exposed in the current volatile price environment.
To date, PBI farms have experienced higher April grass growth rates (Figure 1) than the previous two years. However, during the first two weeks of May, growth declined, but is now recovering well. Figure 2 shows that ‘magic day’ took place around 6 April on PBI farms.
2015 so far…
Spring 2015 started off with a lot more grass on farms (11%) compared with 2014. A high proportion of this grass has been utilised given the slight increase in grazing stocking rate this year.
Surveys of PBI farms in March and April indicated that spring calving was really compact, with 75% of the respective herds surveyed calved by 1 March and 94% calved by 1 April.
This trend is likely to continue into the future, as the reproductive performance of the national herd is improving.
The importance of having a high farm cover at the start of calving cannot be emphasised enough, so that there is sufficient grass available to get high levels of grass into the freshly calved herd.
Up to 20 May, cumulative grass growth is approximately 0.3t DM/ha ahead of this time last year and 1.0t DM/ha ahead of the same period in 2013.
Only regular grass monitoring and reaction to prevailing grass growth can allow extra grass to be utilised.
Spring grass growth
PBI has highlighted the variation in spring DM which exists on farms across the country.
It has identified farms which have grown >2t DM/ha between 1 January and 10 April, while some farms on the other side of the scale are only achieving 0.6t DM/ha.
What is emerging from PBI is that farms that are not achieving sufficient area grazed in February and March are not getting sufficient grass growth in late March/early April.
A survey of a number of farms revealed that, by the end of February, only 20% of the farm was grazed, which is well behind the target of 30% (grazing conditions were difficult towards the end of February).
On many farms, spring nitrogen (N) application was delayed too long and in some cases, the window for N application was missed. It’s very important that spring N targets are achieved, otherwise farms will not have sufficient grass available in late spring.
Many farmers are very busy with calving in February and maybe N application should be contracted out on more farms to reduce the spring workload.
Data from PBI revealed that there is a strong relationship between the amount of grass grown on farms during the spring period and the annual grazing DM production.
The benefits of early spring grazing can sometimes go unnoticed, but it is an important way of stimulating the farm to grow grass as early as possible in spring.
Performance on farms
In 2014, the average grass DM production on dairy farms was 13.9t/ha, which was a 1.6t/ha increase from the previous year (12.3t/ha – see Figure 3). This was anticipated, as 2014 was a superior year for grass growth.
Looking at annual DM production further, we learned that the range in DM production that existed between dairy farms in 2014 was very large.
Some dairy farms only produced 7.3t/ha, while the top 20 dairy farms on PBI exceeded 16t/ha, with some farms achieving more than 10 grazings from each paddock on the grazing platform.
PastureBase Ireland was created and funded by Dairy Research Ireland, FBD Trust, PastureBase and Teagasc. 
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