Countrywide, the average growth rate has dropped under 30kg DM/ha/day, while it’s almost under 20kg DM/ha/day on farms in the northern half of the country.

Thankfully, it has been a relatively good two weeks weather-wise and ground soaked sufficiently to allow for more grazing. It was needed.

As I wrote two weeks ago, a lot of farms had plenty of grass but ground conditions weren’t good enough to graze it. A combination of better weather and getting heavy cattle off the ground via weaning and selling beef stock, has allowed farmers to eat into heavy covers.

For those following an autumn grazing planner, you should have in or around 60% of your farm grazed off by now. Most importantly, do not go back and graze any of this ground that has already been closed off. This is your bank of grass for next spring.

Days left

With more rain promised from the middle of the week onwards, I think if cattle go in now, they will be in to stay. However, I’d be reluctant to pull the plug on all stock if possible.

Target

Try to leave out some light stock – weanling heifers are always a good option. How long stock can stay out will depend on your farm cover and your demand. Your target closing cover should be 550kg DM/ha.

So ignoring growth rate, which is almost irrelevant at this stage, the difference between your current farm cover and the target closing cover is what you have left to graze. Say your current cover is 800kg DM/ha/day, that’s 250kg DM/ha of grass left. A demand of 20kg DM/ha/day means you have 12 days grazing left.

Reduce demand

If you want to prolong grazing, you can’t grow much more grass so you will need to reduce daily demand. But on the flip side, if you see you have 40 days worth of grass left, you need to keep demand reasonably high so it would be wise to house as few as possible.