Ground conditions have been good up to now and, in fairness, farmers are making the most of it.

Cattle are still out and there’s very little damage being done.

However, this weekend could make things more challenging.

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The week ahead

With some heavy rain forecast for many parts of the country over the next number of days, keeping sight of the target percentages will be important.

A farm needs to have a minimum of 60% of the farm grazed by the start of November to have enough grass to carry the herd through the spring months regardless of land type being dry or wet.

Achieving this figure will be difficult if a lot of rain comes in the next few days. Going into lighter covers might be the best option until we get something of a dry spell again.

Cattle will clean out lighter covers better in wet conditions. Heavy covers will be hard to graze and utilisation will be low. This will cause a butt of grass in the paddock that will be even harder to graze in the spring.

By targeting these paddocks with lighter covers, it will mean there should still be enough of the farm closed in time for the start of November.

All farms should be using strip wires in wet weather to utilise grass effectively. Animals should be allocated enough grass for 12 hours to try to get a tight residual, as close to 4cm, as possible.

A 24-hour break is the maximum that should be allocated. More than this and animals will walk grass into the ground and leave more behind them.

In terms of the heavier covers that will be left by this method, it’s going to be a bit of a balancing act to try to get some of them grazed before housing, but this will have to be managed on a day-by-day basis.

This is just a consideration for the week ahead with heavy rain promised. Drier farms where ground conditions might be ok and in places with less rain promised, carry on as normal if possible.

Supplement

Where animals are being fed a lot of silage and meal, the utilisation of grass will inevitably be poorer. If there’s a lot of grass around, pulling back this supplementation will help improve residuals and utilisation.

Milk yield or liveweight gain may take a small hit, but if there’s not enough good-quality grass back next spring, the farm will have a much bigger problem.