Grass: growth exceeds demand for fourth week running

Growth rates around the country remain strong and above average for the time of year, with an average growth rate of 68kgDM/ha recorded this week.

As a result, surplus grass continues to build on farms, with growth rates exceeding demand in most cases. This is the fourth week in a row when supply has exceeded demand.

While farmers will be thinking of extending rotation lengths from this time of year onwards in order to build grass covers for autumn, it is important that this doesn’t happen too quickly given the level of grass growth currently.

Aim to increase rotation lengths by one day/week from now to the end of August.

Pre-grazing yields are currently too high on a lot of farms which will be extending rotation lengths already.

As a result, good graze-outs are becoming a bit more difficult to achieve in this rotation.

Without taking corrective action now, this problem will only get worse over the coming weeks.

It is important to continue to take out surplus grass over the coming week to keep grass quality in check.

Good yields

While the forecast is mixed for the days ahead, there should still be opportunities to get paddocks mown and baled in dry conditions.

There has been a lot of second-cut silage made in the last two weeks, with excellent yields being reported across the country.

This ground will be coming back into grazing rotations in the next 10 days to two weeks in many instances, further reducing demand/ha.

Lismore, Co Waterford

Things are tipping away nicely at the moment. The last few weeks have been great from a grass growth point of view. The soils on the home farm would be shallow and prone to drought and we need to be getting rain fairly often so the weather is really suiting us. We have been skipping over paddocks for silage and topping the odd paddock after cows. At this stage all of the farm has been cut at least once. Post-grazing residuals are only OK, but we try not to push the cows too hard as they are milking fairly well. I kept them on 2kg of meal. We finished breeding two weeks ago after 11 weeks of AI.

Teagasc Curtins Farm, Co Cork

Growth rate dropped back to 50kg/day this week. It was very windy and harsh earlier in the week so that might explain it. I’m not overly worried as we have a decent cover and demand is not very high. Cows are milking reasonably well. We are still feeding 1kg of meal just to get them into the parlour. All of our reseeding is complete for this year. The multi-species swards have germinated and are going OK. We are following the cows with 20 units/ac of nitrogen on the perennial ryegrass and 10 units/ac on the grass and clover and multi-species swards. We have finished breeding and scanning results are saying 80% of the herd is in-calf after seven weeks of breeding.

Teagasc Ballyhaise, Co Cavan

Grass is flying at the minute. We have grown 8t/ha to date so we’re on track to grow 14 or 15t/ha by the end of the year. We’re currently working off a 17- to 18-day rotation length and we are coming very close to starting to build covers so we will be stretching the round length fairly soon. We will cut out some surplus next week and that will probably be the last of it but we’ll make decisions on a week-to-week basis. We have 240kg of milk solids sold per cow and have fed 270kg of meal. We are having ongoing problems with SCC so have CMT tested all high cows and treated two cows that were very high.

Killimor, Co Galway

Grass growth has bounced back over the last few weeks. The issue now is trying to manage the quality in front of stock. I have taken out two lots of surplus over the last week, with 16 acres cut in total. They averaged 5.5 bales to the acre which is light but it will give cattle fresh grass to graze in the next rotation.

I was a bit disappointed with the heifers at the last weighing. They had done just over 0.6kg/day over the last 42 days, while bulls had done 1.5kg/day. I had been prioritising the bulls with the best grass.

Heifers are now grazing aftergrass so I would expect growth rates to be back up.

Calving starts on 20 August, and cows are in great condition. I have been using them to clean up after priority stock where needed in order to keep condition off them.

Tullamore Farm, Co Offaly

Grass has been much less of a worry for us here since the moisture arrived. We are entering covers of around 1,400kg DM/ha to 1,500kg DM/ha at the moment, which is ideal.

The calves are creep-grazing under the wire into the next paddock which is giving them access to the best grass on the farm. There will probably be a paddock or two to take out in the next week or so.

We had a clear TB test on Saturday and while stock were in, the bull was removed from the cows to bring a close to breeding for the year.

We will scan in a few weeks to confirm the number of cows in-calf. I went through the ewes last week and pulled out a batch for culling.

These along with a batch of thinner ewes are now on good grazing to help build condition.

Aclare, Co Sligo

This is our first year measuring grass, so there is a lot to get used to but we can see the benefits of doing it already.

There is plenty of grass at the moment. Grazing conditions have improved again after a few dry days. Things were starting to get sticky for a couple of weeks during the bad weather earlier in the month.

We are trying to avoid having surpluses on any ground that we have reseeded in the last two years to encourage tillering, so the main focus at the moment to keep grazing this ground when it is ready.

We are five weeks into breeding and 80% of cows have been served at this point with just two repeats. Calves are doing very well, averaging 1.4kg/day at the last weighing. We are delighted with that.