The last of our 2018 lambs left the yard this week and so the only stock we have around the place now are the ewes themselves. This allows us time and space to get ready for the upcoming breeding season as well as jotting down some lessons from the last few months.
The biggest lesson is that we are still over-stocked – not on paper, but definitely in practice.
Our stocking rate is currently 3.5 ewes per acre (0.7LU/ac) which is low, as your local advisor’s spreadsheet will tell you.
In fact, the same spreadsheet will declare that the enterprise is unviable at this low stocking rate, without the lavish direct payments so freely offered by the generous souls of officialdom.
A stocking rate of 1LU/ac equates to one cow or five ewes per acre. With an off-farm job in research and an understanding of how rigorous any trials must be, I wouldn’t question these figures.
The issue however is the assumption that:
All land is roughly of the same quality.All farmers can grow the maximum amount of grass from their land.It would be awkward to add in these footnotes whenever the above 'advised' stocking rates are mentioned. Equally, leaving them out gives the false impression that all land is high-quality and all farmers are growing 10t of grass dry matter per hectare.
LU/t of grass grown
To get over this dilemma, perhaps it would be useful to include a measure of grass grown per acre rather than just talking about LU/ac. If a cow needs, say, 5t of grass dry matter per annum (grazing and silage) but you can only grow 3t/ac, then aiming for a stocking rate of 1LU/ac is an unrealistic goal.
You could have 50ac of average land and grow very little grass, or you can have 25ac of good land and grow lots of grass.
Measuring grass takes time and is yet another job when time is already scarce
The capacity of your farm is directly related to the amount of grass you grow, not the amount of land you have. Other elements include grassland management, specific enterprise(s), access to advice, motivation, labour, machinery and the price of fertiliser to name but a few.
And that’s before you consider the weather in any particular year.
Each of these will influence the amount of grass you can grow but the current per acre stocking rate doesn’t properly capture them. If anything, it optimistically assumes each will have a positive impact.
Measuring grass takes time and is yet another job when time is already scarce. But it does give a more realistic picture of farm capacity compared to the simple map-based measure of acreage.
To put it another way, stocking rates that take factor in tonnes of grass grown would take us to a more rounded 3D-world and away from the flat Earth, 2D-world of livestock units per acre.
Read more
Teagasc director tackles ‘misinformation’ on expansion
Listen: keep cow numbers up for productivity
The last of our 2018 lambs left the yard this week and so the only stock we have around the place now are the ewes themselves. This allows us time and space to get ready for the upcoming breeding season as well as jotting down some lessons from the last few months.
The biggest lesson is that we are still over-stocked – not on paper, but definitely in practice.
Our stocking rate is currently 3.5 ewes per acre (0.7LU/ac) which is low, as your local advisor’s spreadsheet will tell you.
In fact, the same spreadsheet will declare that the enterprise is unviable at this low stocking rate, without the lavish direct payments so freely offered by the generous souls of officialdom.
A stocking rate of 1LU/ac equates to one cow or five ewes per acre. With an off-farm job in research and an understanding of how rigorous any trials must be, I wouldn’t question these figures.
The issue however is the assumption that:
All land is roughly of the same quality.All farmers can grow the maximum amount of grass from their land.It would be awkward to add in these footnotes whenever the above 'advised' stocking rates are mentioned. Equally, leaving them out gives the false impression that all land is high-quality and all farmers are growing 10t of grass dry matter per hectare.
LU/t of grass grown
To get over this dilemma, perhaps it would be useful to include a measure of grass grown per acre rather than just talking about LU/ac. If a cow needs, say, 5t of grass dry matter per annum (grazing and silage) but you can only grow 3t/ac, then aiming for a stocking rate of 1LU/ac is an unrealistic goal.
You could have 50ac of average land and grow very little grass, or you can have 25ac of good land and grow lots of grass.
Measuring grass takes time and is yet another job when time is already scarce
The capacity of your farm is directly related to the amount of grass you grow, not the amount of land you have. Other elements include grassland management, specific enterprise(s), access to advice, motivation, labour, machinery and the price of fertiliser to name but a few.
And that’s before you consider the weather in any particular year.
Each of these will influence the amount of grass you can grow but the current per acre stocking rate doesn’t properly capture them. If anything, it optimistically assumes each will have a positive impact.
Measuring grass takes time and is yet another job when time is already scarce. But it does give a more realistic picture of farm capacity compared to the simple map-based measure of acreage.
To put it another way, stocking rates that take factor in tonnes of grass grown would take us to a more rounded 3D-world and away from the flat Earth, 2D-world of livestock units per acre.
Read more
Teagasc director tackles ‘misinformation’ on expansion
Listen: keep cow numbers up for productivity
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