Dealing with the downpours

I’ve heard two sayings a lot in the last few days. The positive people are going with: “A wet and windy May fills the sheds with turf and hay,” while those erring on the more negative side are saying: “Two moons in May means no corn or hay.”

The only turf and hay in the equation at the moment is last year’s turf being burned in fires and last year’s hay being fed to stock on some farms.

It’s been a far from ideal month of May with heavy rain and cold temperatures wreaking havoc on grazing plans around the country.

Forecast

Everybody is watching the weather forecast closely and hopefully the end of this week will bring a welcome change to more seasonable warmer drier conditions.

Table 1 outlines the weather data for four different locations around the country.

Looking at 2021 so far, April was an exceptionally dry month at nearly all of the country’s weather stations.

May hasn’t been as kind with most weather stations recording higher than average rainfall in May and that’s with a week of May still left to go. This has meant silage-cutting has been delayed on most farms.

Grass growth has also been very slow with little opportunity to spread fertiliser during May on heavy farms.

With grass supplies running tight and ground conditions deteriorating in the last few days some farmers have taken the decision to house until the weather settles and grass growth and ground conditions improve.

Housing

With very heavy rain over the last week, housing has occurred on many farms, particularly heavy-stocked farms which were short on grass.

Doing excessive damage to grazing paddocks will affect grass growth later on in the year so should be avoided if at all possible. Yearling cattle could also be housed and fed silage and concentrates to keep them moving while indoors. Spring-calving cows should be held out for as long as possible as a change in diet could affect reproductive performance.

Weaning

The current blip in the weather could provide an opportunity to wean autumn calving cows. These autumn dry cows could then be housed to dry off. They are not priority stock and can be housed until things get back to normal.

Once weaned, autumn calves can be turned back out to grass.

Make sure you are up to date with vaccinations ad dosing prior to weaning.

Grazing

Try to move stock to some of the driest fields on the farm until weather conditions improve. These may not be the next fields in the rotation to graze but they will be the easiest to manage in the current conditions.

Try to keep stock moving in 24-hour breaks if you can at all. A lot of damage will be done to paddocks when grass is eaten.

Stock will get unsettled walking around the edges doing damage.

Don’t worry about grazing tight, you can rectify quality when the weather improves. This will help minimise the damage you do to paddocks. If you have a hardstand or roadway, you could close up animals for a while during the day.

Cows will eat 70% of their daily intake in four hours’ grazing. This could also work if you have a shed adjacent the current grazing area.

If you have to sacrifice a paddock, pick one that needs to be reseeded anyway. Feeding hay or silage outside is probably a last resort but will keep animals settled for a short time until conditions improve.

Improving conditions

When conditions improve, it is important to make sure you have adequate fertiliser spread to enable grass growth.

Cathal Crean, Co Wexford

“It’s been a very cold wet spring down here in Wexford. Grass growth has been very slow and we have had to house some of our cows and calves in the last week. Hopefully this will be shortlived but it upsets everything for the few days.

“Silage has also been delayed as ground conditions aren’t good enough to go in to cut it yet. It’s going to take a few weeks to get back to normal and temperatures will have to improve to get enough grass back ahead of cattle again.”

John Egerton , Co Fermanagh

“Growth hasn’t been too bad up here for the last few weeks but ground conditions are very difficult. I have never seen stock as unsettled.

“We usually keep cows in paddocks for about three days and they are looking for a move after a day and a half in paddocks. We are in the middle of breeding as well, so when we are bringing in cows, that’s unsettling them a lot. Silage is ready to cut but there isn’t a hope of going in on ground at the moment. Our autumn cows haven’t got out of the shed yet. We weaned the calves and they are out at grass.”

John Dunne, Co Offaly

“Grass is very tight. We went out with an extra bag of pasture sward/acre to try and drive on grass growth. We have been trying to keep our suckler cows and calves in good grass so as to not affect breeding or conception rates.

“The store cattle are moving very fast through lighter covers and are coming back around too quickly. Silage has been delayed by seven to 10 days at this stage and we always bank on some of this drier ground coming back in for grazing in June, so it’s going to add a little pressure to the system for another while.”

Sean Hayes, Co Clare

“We housed a bunch of 30 heifers last week as they were doing a lot of damage and just wasting grass. We’ll hold them in until conditions improve.

“Our high ground is doing OK but our low ground is getting very difficult to manage. Grass growth is slow and cattle are going into low covers which isn’t helping things.

“We should have been cutting silage last week and our silage fields are now going to seed so it’s going to be very hard to have quality this year. Breeding is going OK with cows cycling so hopefully the weather won’t have any impact there.”