We have finally left January behind us and hopefully, as February is the first month of spring, we can expect to see more favourable weather.

I recently looked up the Kilkenny weather station online to get an idea of the amount of rain that has fallen this month alone round here.

It was interesting to see that by the end of the third week of January, there had been 108.8mm or 193% of the average rainfall for the same period.

I know other parts of the country are getting it far worse than here, with heavy rainfall since last July.

At last week’s Teagasc Sheep Conference in Loughrea, Dr Phil Creighton spoke about how we can achieve more from grazing grass in our sheep systems. He outlined five key steps to achieve this.

Cheapest feed

We have been told on numerous occasions that grass is the cheapest feed for our animals and that it gives us a competitive advantage in the marketplace. But grass not utilised properly is expensive to grow as it is wasted in the system.

We first need to grow the grass that our stock requires; any less and it cost us money in inputs such as purchased meal or silage; any more and we are under-utilising the grass we are producing. This too is a cost, but it does indicate that the farm could carry more stock in future.

Getting the balance is not simple, but if you start noting how many days you think the stock will get out of a field and then how many days they actually get (ideally three days), you will start to get a handle on what you are producing and even how many days’ worth of grass is on the farm each week.

One of the take-home messages that I got from the presentation was “measuring and budgeting will allow you to match your stocking rate to the grass produced on the farm”.

Opening cover

Speaking of growing grass, I have dusted off the plate meter for this coming year and begun to get back out walking the fields. The wet winter so far hasn’t done us any favours and my average farm opening cover last week was 510kg DM/ha.

Although when I look at the covers for the different grazing mobs, things look a lot different. They range from 723kg to 391kg DM/ha.

I like to have at least an average farm cover of somewhere between 700kg and 800kg DM/ha by lambing time for each of the different groups.

I plan to apply three-quarters of a bag of urea over the fields of the first mob at some point in the next 10 days to help boost covers sufficiently by lambing and to enhance the growth rates during March. The remaining groups’ fields will get an application of fertiliser as they become more trafficable.

I am also going over the list of products and quantities used last spring during the lambing and making sure there are sufficient quantities purchased in before lambing commences. Hopefully, my orders will be sufficient and I will not run out during the very busy few weeks that lie ahead.

I would also like to remind readers that the deadline to submit their applications for year two of the Sheep Welfare Scheme is 9 February.

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