Four Grass10 farm walks were held on dairy farms over the past fortnight. Grass10 is the campaign to improve grass utilisation on dairy and beef farms. The target is to graze each field 10 times and to utilise 10t/ha of grass across the year.
Despite being held in different parts of the country – Wicklow, Kilkenny, Limerick and Galway – the issues discussed were all the same. Too much grass, managing in the wet weather and autumn closing targets were all up for discussion and debate.
Autumn plans
At the Grass10 walk on Denis Lahart’s farm in Kells, Co Kilkenny, last Friday, visitors heard how Denis is planning for the autumn. With 206 cows on a 68ha milking platform, the stocking rate on the milking platform is three cows/ha but the overall stocking rate is 2.8 cows/ha.
For many farmers, this would be considered a high stocking rate, but the cows/ha figure should always be viewed in light of how much grass is being grown, and on the Lahart farm a lot of grass is being grown.
Like most things in farming, success depends on doing the basics brilliantly.
Up to 24 August, Denis had 13.3tDM/ha of grass grown. For the same period last year, he had 11.5tDM/ha grown, an increase of 1.8tDM/ha. For the whole year last year, the farm grew 15.5t/DM/ha so the expectation is that this year the farm should grow over 17tDM/ha, which is nearly twice the national average. To put this in context, on average, every acre of Denis’s milking block is growing nearly twice that of the national average farm.
So what’s the secret? Like most things in farming, success depends on doing the basics brilliantly. The first thing is the land around this part of mid-Kilkenny is good. The Kells series of soils are free-draining but don’t burn up either so good summer growth is pretty much guaranteed. So that’s the soil; the next step is to manage it.
Soil fertility on the Lahart farm is a mixed bag. Overall, 33% of the farm is low in pH, 42% of the farm is low in phosphorus (P) at index one and two and 78% of the farm is low in potash (K). So how is he growing 17t/ha?
Some of the crowd at Denis Lahart's farm walk at Kells, Co Kilkenny.
As Denis explained, the soil samples are from the whole farm, including a leased outfarm, which is low in P and K, while the grass growth figures are just from the milking platform.
Like on a lot of dairy farms, the outfarms are supporting the milking block in terms of providing grazing area for replacements and winter feed for the dairy herd.
This means that over time there is a transfer of nutrients from the outblocks to the home farm. It also facilitates more chemical fertiliser to be spread on the home farm, which helps to explain why most of the milking block has good soil fertility and is growing so much grass.
The next reason Denis gives for strong growth rates is good grass varieties with a high proportion of the farm reseeded. Denis has used both a mix of grass varieties and monocultures, but has more of a preference for the mixes as he feels some tetraploid varieties can be very open.
“Other than improving soil fertility and reseeding, other things I do to improve growth rates is to spread fertiliser often, usually around twice a week. I also avoid topping, instead I will cut out paddocks for bales if they go strong. I walk the farm once a week and this allows me to identify surpluses early so I can take them out early. Cutting them at light covers mean they recover quicker.” Denis explained.
Current grass
Denis has an average farm cover of 931kg/ha and he recorded a growth rate before the walk of a staggering 111kg/ha/day. His current demand, with 206 cows on the 68ha being supplemented with 2kg of meal per head, is only 55kg/ha day so farm cover is building up fast.
His target is to have a peak average farm cover of around 1,150kg/ha by mid-September, which should see him out to closing at an average farm cover of around 600kg by mid-November. At that point, the herd will be fully housed and milked indoors for another month.
Teagasc advisers Michael Freaney and Richard O’Brien spoke about the risks of building up too much grass too soon. This is a problem this autumn as growth rates have been much higher than normal after all the damp and humid weather. Their advice was that farmers who have a reasonable stocking rate (less than three cows/ha) should avoid building average farm cover greater than 1,100kg/ha. This advice is based on the fact that at average farm covers above this, pre-grazing yields go very high, quality deteriorates and if the weather turns wet it is difficult and messy to get the high covers grazed. As a rule of thumb, doubling the average farm cover gives you the pre-grazing yield. Covers of greater than 2,200kg are very high and hard to graze.
Their advice was that lower stocked farms should still cut out surplus grass for silage now, if average farm cover is above 1,100kg/ha today. Some farmers questioned whether less nitrogen could be spread now?
The feedback was that nitrogen spread now will help to grow grass in three and four weeks’ time. So it depends on whether the extra grass grown will be eaten by the cows.
On farms with a high stocking rate it probably will be eaten, but farms with a low stocking rate will struggle to get through the grass they have and will grow over the next two or three months of grazing.
Denis plans to start closing paddocks around 5 October, but he said that this was a moveable feast and he won’t know the date the first closed paddock is actually closed until he’s finished grazing.
This is because it all depends on average farm cover in mid-November. If growth is good and average farm cover is high, he can afford to graze paddocks again up to 10 or 15 October, but if growth rates are poor, he might have to stop grazing earlier so paddocks last grazed on, say, 1 October will not be grazed again.
“It takes a bit of juggling around. I’ll try not to spread slurry on any paddocks grazed up to 10 October, in case I need to get back in to grazing them again,” Denis said.
Milk production on the Lahart farm is good. Denis’s herd is of a British Friesian background but a lot of Holstein Friesian has been used over the past few years. Bulls used in recent years are all high-EBI genomically selected bulls.
In 2015, the herd delivered 500kg milk solids per cow to Glanbia. Last year, the herd delivered 470kgMS/cow with a higher proportion of heifers in the herd.
So far this year, the herd has delivered 355kgMS/cow, which is 25kg ahead of the same period last year, so Denis reckons they will do close to 500kgMS/cow this year.
Last year, the herd was fed 800kg of meal per cow. So far this year, the herd has been fed 500kg of meal per head. At the moment, they are producing 1.71kgMS/cow and fed 2kg of meal.
Value of the grass
Denis has achieved an average of eight grazings across every paddock on the farm so by the end of the year he will have done nine grazings, just short of the Grass10 target. Michael Freaney from Teagasc reckons that this equates to a grass utilisation rate of about 13tDM/ha, which is well above the Grass10 target.
Denis has made 600 bales of silage from the grazing platform, equating to three good quality bales per cow which he will feed back to the herd at the shoulders of they year or when milking indoors in December.
In terms of the value of the grass grown, Michael said that if you value grass somewhere in between the cost of silage and meal, to buy in the feed grown on the farm, Denis would have to pay around €220,000.
“If the average farm is only growing 9.5tDM/ha, then Denis has grown feed to the value of €75,000 more than if he was only growing 9.5tDM/ha. This is a massive figure and it shows the value and importance of focusing on growing and utilising grass,” Michael said.
A total of 206 cows are milked on the Kilkenny farm, which is stocked at three cows/ha.The farm is on track to grow 17tDM/ha this year.The farm will graze each paddock on average nine times this year.The herd is on track to produce 500kgMS/cow.
Four Grass10 farm walks were held on dairy farms over the past fortnight. Grass10 is the campaign to improve grass utilisation on dairy and beef farms. The target is to graze each field 10 times and to utilise 10t/ha of grass across the year.
Despite being held in different parts of the country – Wicklow, Kilkenny, Limerick and Galway – the issues discussed were all the same. Too much grass, managing in the wet weather and autumn closing targets were all up for discussion and debate.
Autumn plans
At the Grass10 walk on Denis Lahart’s farm in Kells, Co Kilkenny, last Friday, visitors heard how Denis is planning for the autumn. With 206 cows on a 68ha milking platform, the stocking rate on the milking platform is three cows/ha but the overall stocking rate is 2.8 cows/ha.
For many farmers, this would be considered a high stocking rate, but the cows/ha figure should always be viewed in light of how much grass is being grown, and on the Lahart farm a lot of grass is being grown.
Like most things in farming, success depends on doing the basics brilliantly.
Up to 24 August, Denis had 13.3tDM/ha of grass grown. For the same period last year, he had 11.5tDM/ha grown, an increase of 1.8tDM/ha. For the whole year last year, the farm grew 15.5t/DM/ha so the expectation is that this year the farm should grow over 17tDM/ha, which is nearly twice the national average. To put this in context, on average, every acre of Denis’s milking block is growing nearly twice that of the national average farm.
So what’s the secret? Like most things in farming, success depends on doing the basics brilliantly. The first thing is the land around this part of mid-Kilkenny is good. The Kells series of soils are free-draining but don’t burn up either so good summer growth is pretty much guaranteed. So that’s the soil; the next step is to manage it.
Soil fertility on the Lahart farm is a mixed bag. Overall, 33% of the farm is low in pH, 42% of the farm is low in phosphorus (P) at index one and two and 78% of the farm is low in potash (K). So how is he growing 17t/ha?
Some of the crowd at Denis Lahart's farm walk at Kells, Co Kilkenny.
As Denis explained, the soil samples are from the whole farm, including a leased outfarm, which is low in P and K, while the grass growth figures are just from the milking platform.
Like on a lot of dairy farms, the outfarms are supporting the milking block in terms of providing grazing area for replacements and winter feed for the dairy herd.
This means that over time there is a transfer of nutrients from the outblocks to the home farm. It also facilitates more chemical fertiliser to be spread on the home farm, which helps to explain why most of the milking block has good soil fertility and is growing so much grass.
The next reason Denis gives for strong growth rates is good grass varieties with a high proportion of the farm reseeded. Denis has used both a mix of grass varieties and monocultures, but has more of a preference for the mixes as he feels some tetraploid varieties can be very open.
“Other than improving soil fertility and reseeding, other things I do to improve growth rates is to spread fertiliser often, usually around twice a week. I also avoid topping, instead I will cut out paddocks for bales if they go strong. I walk the farm once a week and this allows me to identify surpluses early so I can take them out early. Cutting them at light covers mean they recover quicker.” Denis explained.
Current grass
Denis has an average farm cover of 931kg/ha and he recorded a growth rate before the walk of a staggering 111kg/ha/day. His current demand, with 206 cows on the 68ha being supplemented with 2kg of meal per head, is only 55kg/ha day so farm cover is building up fast.
His target is to have a peak average farm cover of around 1,150kg/ha by mid-September, which should see him out to closing at an average farm cover of around 600kg by mid-November. At that point, the herd will be fully housed and milked indoors for another month.
Teagasc advisers Michael Freaney and Richard O’Brien spoke about the risks of building up too much grass too soon. This is a problem this autumn as growth rates have been much higher than normal after all the damp and humid weather. Their advice was that farmers who have a reasonable stocking rate (less than three cows/ha) should avoid building average farm cover greater than 1,100kg/ha. This advice is based on the fact that at average farm covers above this, pre-grazing yields go very high, quality deteriorates and if the weather turns wet it is difficult and messy to get the high covers grazed. As a rule of thumb, doubling the average farm cover gives you the pre-grazing yield. Covers of greater than 2,200kg are very high and hard to graze.
Their advice was that lower stocked farms should still cut out surplus grass for silage now, if average farm cover is above 1,100kg/ha today. Some farmers questioned whether less nitrogen could be spread now?
The feedback was that nitrogen spread now will help to grow grass in three and four weeks’ time. So it depends on whether the extra grass grown will be eaten by the cows.
On farms with a high stocking rate it probably will be eaten, but farms with a low stocking rate will struggle to get through the grass they have and will grow over the next two or three months of grazing.
Denis plans to start closing paddocks around 5 October, but he said that this was a moveable feast and he won’t know the date the first closed paddock is actually closed until he’s finished grazing.
This is because it all depends on average farm cover in mid-November. If growth is good and average farm cover is high, he can afford to graze paddocks again up to 10 or 15 October, but if growth rates are poor, he might have to stop grazing earlier so paddocks last grazed on, say, 1 October will not be grazed again.
“It takes a bit of juggling around. I’ll try not to spread slurry on any paddocks grazed up to 10 October, in case I need to get back in to grazing them again,” Denis said.
Milk production on the Lahart farm is good. Denis’s herd is of a British Friesian background but a lot of Holstein Friesian has been used over the past few years. Bulls used in recent years are all high-EBI genomically selected bulls.
In 2015, the herd delivered 500kg milk solids per cow to Glanbia. Last year, the herd delivered 470kgMS/cow with a higher proportion of heifers in the herd.
So far this year, the herd has delivered 355kgMS/cow, which is 25kg ahead of the same period last year, so Denis reckons they will do close to 500kgMS/cow this year.
Last year, the herd was fed 800kg of meal per cow. So far this year, the herd has been fed 500kg of meal per head. At the moment, they are producing 1.71kgMS/cow and fed 2kg of meal.
Value of the grass
Denis has achieved an average of eight grazings across every paddock on the farm so by the end of the year he will have done nine grazings, just short of the Grass10 target. Michael Freaney from Teagasc reckons that this equates to a grass utilisation rate of about 13tDM/ha, which is well above the Grass10 target.
Denis has made 600 bales of silage from the grazing platform, equating to three good quality bales per cow which he will feed back to the herd at the shoulders of they year or when milking indoors in December.
In terms of the value of the grass grown, Michael said that if you value grass somewhere in between the cost of silage and meal, to buy in the feed grown on the farm, Denis would have to pay around €220,000.
“If the average farm is only growing 9.5tDM/ha, then Denis has grown feed to the value of €75,000 more than if he was only growing 9.5tDM/ha. This is a massive figure and it shows the value and importance of focusing on growing and utilising grass,” Michael said.
A total of 206 cows are milked on the Kilkenny farm, which is stocked at three cows/ha.The farm is on track to grow 17tDM/ha this year.The farm will graze each paddock on average nine times this year.The herd is on track to produce 500kgMS/cow. 
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