Grass growth has dipped below 60kg DM/ha/day this week.

The weekend’s rain has spoiled grazing plans for those chasing a tight residual after cattle. Most farmers are reporting that cattle are moving on early to prevent damage to the sod. For those on extremely heavy ground, the weekend’s rain proved the final straw and cattle have been housed.

In a typical year, this week should see your average farm cover figure at its highest for the season. The theory behind this is that growth will be dipping below demand from now onwards and there must be enough of a supply on the farm to carry us into November. There should be 30 days of grazing ahead of cattle at this point. For a farm stocked at 2LU/ha, that’s an average farm cover of around 960kg DM/ha.

But this is not a typical year. Building grass has been easy this autumn and the reality is that many will have much greater figures than this. Weather may have scuppered paddock removal plans in recent weeks when grass got too strong, too quick, or farmers might simply have gotten sick of making bales.

Utilisation

We can afford to let pre-grazing covers climb slightly to around 2,000kg DM/ha (12-13cm) at this point given that animals should move through grass quite quickly. But keep an eye on utilisation. September weather doesn’t normally lend itself to ideal grazing conditions.

If there are some heavy covers ahead of cattle, I would still be advocating for the baler – that’s the logical move. Just because it’s September doesn’t mean we change tack with grassland management.

Option two is to strip-graze it. The success of this strategy will be governed by the sod and of course the weather. Alternatively, you can graze it and return down the line, or run a leader-follower system with some young stock.

With the forecast decent for the coming days, try to make use of a big cover or two. We’ve gone to the trouble of growing the grass and must utilise.

Richard Jennings

Co Mayo

Farming system Suckler to weanling

Land type Dry to heavy

While it has been wet here recently, we’re lucky in that there’s some rocky ground that can take heavier stock when things soften. You can’t plough it and even do well to get pigtail posts down into it – but we’re glad to have it. Having said that, I know that we didn’t get as much rain as others did over the weekend.

My grass supply at present is quite good and for the most part, ground conditions are holding up. Calves are creeping forward through gates for fresh grass and a small bit of meal. It’s a 15% protein, cereal-based ration. They’re doing a small bit of damage to gateways alright but nothing major.

I’m weaning at present and sold some of my strongest bulls at the mart last week. Blue export types did well for me.

Grass supply looks good and I’ve no big heavy covers either. I took out bales as recently as three weeks ago. Sheep will be dosed, dipped and vaccinated soon and go to the ram in the middle of October.

Chris McCarthy

Co Westmeath

Farming system Suckler to weanling

Land type Dry

We grew 60kg DM/ha here this week – my demand is 39kg daily. I have 33 grazing days ahead of me at present, which might seem like plenty, but caution is needed when interpreting this. How much of this will we get to utilise?

Last Friday’s rain has us moving cattle on early. Hopefully I’ll get back to clean out these paddocks. The weather will tell all, though I’m happy to see that the short-range forecast is good. I blanket-spread a bag of CAN across the farm last week and the spreader is parked up now.

I’m weaning calves at the moment. I simply pick a handful of cows out of a grazing group for housing. The downside of this method is that their calves do laps of the paddock for a short period, which isn’t ideal on a wet sod. The drying conditions will limit the damage. I dosed, vaccinated and weighed the calves recently. My bulls have achieved weight gains of 1.34kg daily since birth and heifers have done 1.2kg.

Niall Patterson

Co Leitrim

Farming system Suckler to weanling

Land type Very heavy

It has been a disastrous year here rain-wise. Our land is gets wet extremely quickly and any dry days that come seem to be followed by a downpour and we simply can’t take that. After a good period of rain, we need at minimum four days to dry out a field.

All cows at home are in currently. In truth, they’ll be lucky to get out again. We have 11 dry cows grazing an out-farm and 15 weanlings out at home. The weanlings are doing a bit of damage but I don’t want to house them again before they go in early October. You can see that the thrive outdoors is back a bit. Even the lambs will need meal to get them moving – grass is only a drink for them at present.

If things continue the way they’re going we’ll be in a big deficit in terms of winter fodder – feeding this year’s silage already will do that. I’m selling cull cows at present to try and take the pressure off. They’re getting around €1.80/kg which I’m happy with.

Dónal Scully

Co Limerick

Farming system Suckler to beef

Land type Dry

My calving ended in early September. We have 51 calves from 51 cows – you have to be happy with that. The bull has been with the cows since 1 September and looks to be busy. I synchronised my heifers with estrumate. Twenty (of 30) came in heat to the first shot and I’ve only two left to serve. I’m using RIO, ZAG and AA2025 on them. We’ve gotten quite a bit of rain in the last few days and these heifers are marking the ground slightly. I wouldn’t call it poaching, but it’s the first bit of damage to ground here this year. Thankfully, the forecast for the coming days is quite good.

Any ground not covered in the last fortnight will get fertiliser today (Wednesday). I’ll go with compounds where necessary and the rest of the farm will get straight CAN.

There are 45 bulls in the shed for finishing. They’ve just begun their adaption to an ad-lib diet and I’ll start slaughtering in November. The aim is for them to be all gone by Christmas and we’re targeting a 400kg carcase.