A nice mix of clover and grass is producing good results on the Greenfield Farm in Kilkenny. The important word in the last sentence is the word “mix”. Managing clover can be a hard balancing act – on many farms you can get too much clover, it can take over the grass sward, especially at this time of the year, and then it becomes more dangerous in terms of bloat etc.

At the moment the clover/grass ratio in the Kilkenny sward could best be described as a total mixed sward akin to a total mixed ration (TMR). It is not a mass of clover – every bite a cow takes will include clover and grass. Continuous grazing rather than cutting is keeping a lid on the clover.

This week the cows are going into covers close to 3,000kg DM/ha, but the quality is very good. There is no doubt in my mind that the clover is really helping the sward quality at this time of the year and is also benefitting milk solids production. It is also allowing the staff build higher covers and at the same time maintain quality. A strip wire is up, forcing the herd down into the sward at each grazing. I’ve seen high grass covers at this time of the year become a matt of brown leaf and on a long rotation it can become stale and decay. In Clonakilty this week, the cows on the grass clover mix are delivering 0.3kg of milk solids per cow more than the cows on grass only.

The grass cover build-up in Kilkenny this year came about by feeding 10 days of round bale silage in mid to late August. You can see from Figure 1 that cover built up quickly, some might say too quickly, but cutting September silage offered little benefit. Anyway, this farm is dry so you can be confident the cows will harvest it well into November in a normal year.

This year has been almost perfect in Kilkenny for grass growth. The rain came at the right time to drive growth and the summer drought didn’t bite. It looks like the farm is on track to grow 13.6t DM/ha. This week I was on a farm in Tyrone where the farmer expects to finish 2015 grass growth with 8.5t/ha to 9t/ha after being washed out in July and August. The contrast is stark, and really shows the potential for the east of the country to grow grass and produce milk. My friend in Tyrone is better off stocked at less than 2 cows/ha, while Kilkenny can aim for 2.8 cows/ha over the year and know (in a half-normal year) it will produce enough winter feed and grazed grass.

Yes this mid-October sunny and dry spell is really suiting graze-out on the Greenfield Farm in Kilkenny, but the sward mix for me is crucial to the graze out and milk solids performance.

Scanned

The herd were scanned last week and the results show 15 out of 320 cows are not in calf. Six-week in calf rate is about 70%. Overall, it is a good result – remember there were no clean-up bulls, no fancy heat recording collars, and it was all AI. Vasectomised bulls enter the herd at week five of breeding to help heat detection. Effectively the scan shows most of the herd will calve in February and March next year, but 10% will calve in April and May (15 cows in each month). These cows are obviously going to struggle to stay in the herd next year.

As I said to a group of farmers in Offaly last week, I know plenty of farmers who have 15 cows not in calf and they are milking 80 cows. The benefits of good fertility are clear and make the difference, especially if you are growing a herd.

Milk yield

This week the herd are milking 14 litres at 5.13% fat and 4.38% protein (1.37kg MS) on grass only. So far this year the herd has consumed about 120kg of meal per cow. Remember the herd is doing this while at the same time walking between one to two kilometres per day.

The herd is not breaking any records on per-hectare performance. This year, milk solids sold per cow will come in around 400kg of milk solids at a stocking rate of 2.7 cows/ha (1,080kg MS/ha). You could probably add on another 20kg of milk solids for milk fed to calves (1,130kg MS/ha). All that from grazed grass and 32t of purchased meal.

This week

The key now is to watch condition score. Get a wet week and long walks and you can run down a herd in a matter of days. Young cows will be the first to suffer. Drying off rather than extra feeding will be the plan for Kilkenny.

The first heifers will be dried from 20 October onwards depending on calving date. The cows not in calf and the cull cows will be taken out and sold. This will help reduce stocking rate and keep the rest of the herd at grass for longer. By the end of this week, about 30% of the farm will be closed for the winter (Figure 2).

Stand-off pad

The pad is getting a new drainage pipe this week. Track machine is in and a new Wavin pipe with slots cut out will be laid into a bed of stone down the middle of the pad. The experience has been that the yellow pipes crush easier, especially when any weight comes on, so the brown Wavin are stronger but you have to get out the angle grinder to make the slots. The woodchip has started to arrive and is heaped on the stones but won’t be spread out for another while. The heat has really come off the price and is now only 50% of the price where it was two years ago.

That paddock which was reseeded behind the parlour with monocultures of AstonLord and Aberwolf hasn’t improved much through the year despite cutting it for bales in an effort to clean it out. The cows still complain when they enter the paddock. So far the summary conclusion is that they are simply very poor quality varieties with very poor digestibility characteristics.