High growth rates were recorded around the country again this week. With a lot of surplus arising on farms and weather being so variable, it’s important to remove surplus as soon as the opportunity arises as growth rate tends to drop off at this time of year.

Surplus grass cut over the next week should be back ready to graze in mid-August, which will be important as grazing management then will be switching to building covers to stretch out the grazing season and minimising supplementary feed for the rest of the year.

Grass quality and graze-outs are the big issues on farms at the moment. Good graze-outs seem to be hard to achieve this rotation in areas.

This may be down to high nitrogen levels being released post-moisture deficit, leading to a souring of the grass.

It’s important not to go topping all these paddocks as you will waste a lot of feed and slow growth even further in a period when growth always tends to drop off.

Keeping the pre-grazing yield under 1,400kg/ha will help increase utilisation and reduce residual height and earmarking any poorly grazed-out paddocks to be grazed at 1,200kg/ha cover in the subsequent rotation.

Reseeding

Late July/early August is the best time to get autumn reseeds sown. High soil temperatures give a great opportunity for good establishment and there will also be a greater chance to get the paddock grazed and sprayed for weeds.

A big problem with autumn reseeds is they can be left too late, leading to poor establishment which delays grazing if not ruling it out till the spring and subsequently leading to a more open sward.

Stephen O’Keefe

Kilmallock, Co Limerick

Grass is in good supply on the farm. We have 18ac taken out for surplus silage. Grass quality is good ahead of cows, which are grazing a cover of 1,400kg/ha. We spread three-quarters of the farm last week with 25 units of urea and will spread the rest this week. Breeding will continue here for 10 more days. We did an early scan with 51% of the cows in-calf in the first three weeks. We weighed the weanling heifers on the farm last week as they are now six months old and should be 30% of their mature weight. The lightest heifers weighed 125kg and will graze reseeded ground to help them catch up with stronger heifers.

Brian McCracken

Newtownards, Co Down

We are in a good position with grass but we’re under pressure with the moisture deficit up to three weeks ago, which has taken its toll on the tank with protein back 0.1% on this time last year. Grass growth is up to 76kg this week from 59kg/day last week. Grass quality is good ahead of the cows with silage ground and reseeds coming back into the rotation. We are following the cows with dirty water straight after grazing and going with a round of 25-0-13 fertiliser this month. There are 253 cows being milked on the farm here and averaged 496kg MS/cow last year. Calving doesn’t start here until the 26 February as ground is slow to warm up in the spring.

Caroline O’Sullivan

Teagasc Curtins Farm, Co Cork

We are just finishing reseeding a few more paddocks, which will mean 75% of the farm will have been reseeded between this year and last. While reseeding, all fences along hedgerow have been moved out 1.5m to create wildlife habitats around the farm. Breeding is now finished here and so far we have 75% scanned in-calf in the first six weeks of breeding with more later-calving cows to be scanned. There have been very few problems with lameness on the farm here this year. We have had a touch of mortillaro in the herd before so have been footbathing the cows every two weeks which seems to be working well.