Average grass growth this week is 14kg/day around the country. Those with a high proportion (50% plus) of their farm grazed will probably notice a slowdown in growth as higher covers will be growing faster than grazed swards. But the big challenge this week is not about growth, it’s about utilisation. Some parts got more rain so far this March than they got during all of February and March last year. Conditions are tricky and to manage you must be grazing the driest fields available and you need to be on/off grazing also. Where silage is being fed, protein and yield has fallen. Housing fully and feeding silage is a last resort, but the only resort in many cases.

You should be looking at the grass ahead of you and what’s coming behind you. This is far more important than looking at dates now. Some farms have lots of high covers ahead, and covers of 600kg/ha to 800kg/ha coming behind. This isn’t a great place to be as you will struggle to end the first round without skipping over paddocks. Equally, if farm cover is low (less than 700kg/ha) and stocking rate is high then you need to slow down and stretch the rotation out to 5 or 10 April. Measure the cover on the first grazed paddocks. Count the days left in the first rotation and multiply this by expected growth rate. Add this to the cover on the first grazed paddocks and that will tell you the expected pre-grazing yields. It should be in the 1,000kg to 1,200kg range. Temperatures are set to rise towards the end of next week. A boost in growth won’t be universally welcomed. If high covers aren’t grazed soon they will go backwards. Cows are eating around 12kg to 16kg of dry matter in total. If mediocre quality silage is in the diet, intakes will drop.

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