Taking advantage of grass was one of the key messages covered at the recent Dairylink spring walks.

Slow growth and wet ground conditions have held back grazing, especially on higher rainfall farms, where grazing conditions were better in March than they have been so far in April.

The message is still clear, however – grass is by far the best feed for cows, and we must try to optimise it in the cows’ diet.

Building blocks

As Dairylink walks revealed, many farms are missing the infrastructure for effective grazing, and this will need to be addressed.

In the short term the priority must be to get cows out. Simply walking the farm to assess grass cover and ground conditions is time well spent and will give the confidence to make decisions.

At this stage all project farmers have a minimum of six farm walks and grass measurements completed. This basic information is providing these farmers with the data on their individual grazing blocks to make decisions.

Charles Clarke from Bailieborough, Co Cavan, will be starting his second rotation this week with excellent-quality grass awaiting cows in the paddocks grazed at the start of the year (15 February).

Pre-grazing covers will be 1,500kg DM/ha and above.

Second rotation

Bill Brown has already started the second rotation with 65units/acre of nitrogen spread in total on the grazing area at 15 April.

Grass is moving on this farm – the last two grass growth figures measured have been in the 30s.

The challenge now for Bill is to increase herd demand to match the supply of grass from the grazing block by removing silage from the diet and tailoring meal feeding to supplement grass.

Nigel Corbett, Banbridge, Co Down

Cows returned to grazing last weekend after a two-week period back inside on silage and meal. Wet conditions forced cows back inside with 50% of the grazing block grazed for the first time on 5 April.

Cows have poached a small area on the last two grazings. However, this has had no impact on regrowth, and the damage is not considered serious. With no grazing over the past fortnight, average farm cover has slowly built up, with covers on the heaviest paddocks measured on Monday at 1,800kg DM/ha and an average farm cover of 910kg.

On the Monday farm walk, the decision was taken to get cows out day and night and remove silage from the diet to increase herd demand.

While ground conditions have improved, it is still soft. Some small areas of paddocks are very wet and will need to be temporarily fenced off when cows move in. Cows will need an appetite to effectively graze these covers. Removing the silage will improve the standard of grazing or clean-out of paddocks, and allow the herd to take advantage of the grass cover on the farm with grass analysis highlighting quality to be 78D-Value, 12.1 ME, and 22% protein.

Currently the herd is fed an average of 6.5kg of a dairy concentrate at 18% crude protein. The meal bin is half full and will continue to be fed at a reduced rate until it is all gone. A lower protein meal will be used after this. In terms of the feed rate of concentrate, the target is 3.5kg of concentrate per cow with grass intake targeted at 15kg DM/day.

Total growth on the farm this year is 0.75t DM/ha, with the heaviest soil type paddocks the slowest movers on the farm to date. One paddock close to the parlour has been identified as a reseed candidate for this year. It has been very slow despite the fact it is one of the driest fields on the farm, with good soil fertility. The farm has received 46 units of nitrogen per acre to date, with another 46 units going on this week.

Muriate of potash is being used on areas with low potash (index 1 and below) at one bag to the acre (60 units/acre). The grazing block has received no slurry this year. However, if ground conditions continue to improve, 1,500 gallon/acre will be applied after grazing but we must be careful as rotation is increasing.