As the last seven days have proved, March is the month of many weathers.
From over 20mm of rain in many places on Thursday and Friday to a lovely sunny day on Saturday, the unexpected challenges of spring grazing persist.
The week ahead looks mixed, with no prolonged period of dry weather imminent, but with significantly less rainfall expected compared to the week just gone.
The one big positive with the weather right now is that there are good drying opportunities in between showers.
While it may not be dry, land is still drying out because there is more evaporation from wind and sun than precipitation.
This means that there should be a resumption to grazing again this week.
Tender land
Many farmers had to press pause on grazing over the last few days because ground was too wet.
Where land is still very tender, on/off grazing will be necessary. For farmers that haven’t tried it before, it's an essential tool to enable cows to graze, while minimising damage.
The secret with on/off grazing is to make sure that cows have an appetite for grass when they do go out grazing – this usually means locking them away from silage for two or three hours prior to turnout.
Some farmers will say it needs to be longer than this, up to eight or nine hours without silage in front of the cows in order to build up sufficient appetite to avoid doing damage.
Intakes should not decrease when on/off grazing. Instead the time that cows are eating is adjusted to fit in with the time that they are grazing.
When to avoid grazing
Avoid grazing very high covers during wet weather – pre-grazing yields of 1,100kg to 1,300kg DM/ha are probably best during wet weather.
It is best to be grazing lower covers anyway on farms that are well behind in terms of area grazed. Whereas farmers that have a lot of area grazed and are on – or close to – target should be aiming to get higher covers grazed off, if they can.
Grazing square sections is preferable to grazing long narrow strips as cows do less walking in a square section.
SHARING OPTIONS