Growth is holding steady. The average growth rate is currently at 38kg DM/ha/day with very little variance between regions. Expected growth rates for this time of year are between 25kg-30kg DM/ha/day so we are running about 40% ahead of this at present.

When looking at your average farm cover, this should be starting to decline steadily on a weekly basis. This week, optimum farm cover is around 400kg DM per livestock unit. Speaking to farmers throughout the country, it is apparent that grazing conditions are also excellent. Rain over the weekend appears to have had a minimal effect, and with Met Éireann forecasting little or no rain for the next five days, this looks set to continue.

Grazing tight

With conditions optimum, grass utilisation is excellent. This is a big help for autumn grazing where one of the key objectives is to graze ground as tight as possible before closing. This will significantly improve grass quality next spring and encourage tillering. A lot of places have seen very strong regrowths on ground that was closed earlier this month. While the temptation might be to graze these regrowths and squeeze the last out of the good autumn conditions, this might not be prudent.

The idea of closing ground now is to allow parts of the farm to develop a good grass cover before growth stops for the winter.

This is the ground that will then be available for early-grazing next spring. When growth does grind to a halt, you don’t want to be left in a situation where the entire farm is grazed bare.

It is for this reason I would also be cautious about grazing too much ground with dry cows. As weaning takes place throughout the country, a lot of farmers are opting to turn the cows, as well as the weanlings, back out to grass once weaning is complete. While this is a perfect option to clean off paddocks weanlings have grazed, be careful not to over-do this and stunt regrowths on ground earmarked for early grazing also.

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Grass+: superb autumn for growth and grazing