Cattle growth this week seems unprecedented for the time of year. It is an unusual sight to see drought conditions on farms around the country as we head into the week of the Ploughing.
It leaves the farm ideally set up for extended grazing right into November (if not further) which is possible on this farm as we are lucky to have half our land sitting on a gravel bed. It can reduce the cost substantially of overwintering store cattle by reducing the winter period to three months in our case in some years.
I don’t need to highlight that as an industry we all need to improve the efficiency of our systems. But no matter how highlighted this fact is, it needs to be over a period of time. Variable costs can rapidly spiral out of control in the pursuit of efficiency.
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One way we control the cost of wintering cattle is allowing silage after math to build up at this time of year. Even though the covers seem strong, there is no issue cleaning out these fields with a reel of white tape and some posts.
Similarly on our grazing block, we allow covers to build at this time of year. Our demand for grass reduced rapidly as cattle are drafted for slaughter on an ongoing basis. We are currently stocked at 1,500 kg per ha, down from a peak of 2,800kg ha. I am probably going against guidelines in that my average farm cover at closing is usually quite high probably close to 1,000 kg dm per ha.
Some might argue that I would experience winter kill of the grass. But I find this is usually quite low and this grass is invaluable in the spring months allowing us to have cattle out by the 1st of March when grazed grass is superior to any expensive concentrates or silage. I am more in favour of grazing when conditions allow rather than farming by a calendar.
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Cattle growth this week seems unprecedented for the time of year. It is an unusual sight to see drought conditions on farms around the country as we head into the week of the Ploughing.
It leaves the farm ideally set up for extended grazing right into November (if not further) which is possible on this farm as we are lucky to have half our land sitting on a gravel bed. It can reduce the cost substantially of overwintering store cattle by reducing the winter period to three months in our case in some years.
I don’t need to highlight that as an industry we all need to improve the efficiency of our systems. But no matter how highlighted this fact is, it needs to be over a period of time. Variable costs can rapidly spiral out of control in the pursuit of efficiency.
One way we control the cost of wintering cattle is allowing silage after math to build up at this time of year. Even though the covers seem strong, there is no issue cleaning out these fields with a reel of white tape and some posts.
Similarly on our grazing block, we allow covers to build at this time of year. Our demand for grass reduced rapidly as cattle are drafted for slaughter on an ongoing basis. We are currently stocked at 1,500 kg per ha, down from a peak of 2,800kg ha. I am probably going against guidelines in that my average farm cover at closing is usually quite high probably close to 1,000 kg dm per ha.
Some might argue that I would experience winter kill of the grass. But I find this is usually quite low and this grass is invaluable in the spring months allowing us to have cattle out by the 1st of March when grazed grass is superior to any expensive concentrates or silage. I am more in favour of grazing when conditions allow rather than farming by a calendar.
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