Almost all cattle are now at grass, but only for the past 10 days. Ground conditions are reasonably good, but growth is not great.

Unfortunately, I am still grazing silage ground which is not ideal at this time of year but I would just like to see a slightly higher cover before I move everything off the silage ground and on to the grazing ground as I don’t want to run out of grass.

Keeping grass in front of stock is always priority over closing silage for me, even though I like to cut my silage at the end of May when possible. That’s not looking very likely at the minute but you never know, May grass growth on this farm can sometimes be something to behold.

Grazing

Stock have cleaned up nicely and very quickly since going to grass and are fairly content, but the cold nights are always a concern with regard to grass tetany so I have plenty of hi-mag buckets out with them. Not foolproof, I know, but they are the simplest and my preferred method of trying to get magnesium into the cow.

Years ago, I used to feed a kilo of meal at grass with some calmag mixed through it, but I found it left cattle very unsettled as every time they saw you, they thought they were getting fed and cows being unsettled can bring on tetany as quick as anything.

There is a nice amount of leaf on most fields so if mother nature decides to send the correct conditions grass covers can double in a very short space of time, I hope

I just got my first grass measurement done at the weekend which tells me I have 11 days of grass ahead of me if I move everything on to the grazing ground straight away.

I am tempted to do this because the rain on Saturday has helped growth a little and temperatures have also risen slightly so I’m hopeful that grass is just about to spring into action.

There is a nice amount of leaf on most fields so if mother nature decides to send the correct conditions grass covers can double in a very short space of time, I hope.

Spraying

My contractor managed to get a bit of spraying done for me last week as well. Some docks, some rushes and the field the red clover is going into has been burned off.

It was later than I would have liked, but that’s the Donegal spring for you - you just have to work with it.

This particular field has the best crop of docks and scutch grass that I have ever seen. Both of these are not particularly easy to kill, so I wanted to make sure they were growing strong before I sprayed them in order to get a good kill.

Hopefully in two weeks’ time I’ll have it sowed, weather permitting, and we’ll see how things progress after that.