Grassland Management:

Grass growth has been good, especially in the northern half of the country where soil moisture deficit isn’t a problem. Excellent grazing conditions have also meant grass utilisation has been very good over the past few weeks. If at all possible, try to graze stock in a rotation, allocating fresh grass every three days. This will mean cattle are grazing quality swards and in turn daily liveweight gains will be higher.

Use the three-day/three-week rule – that is, grow grass in three weeks and graze it in three days. If grass is growing longer than three weeks, this means it is too strong at grazing, quality will drop and cattle won’t put on maximum weight. If it is taking longer than three days to graze a field, it means it was too heavy going into it and you will hit regrowth by staying too long in the paddock.

At this time of year, you should be going into covers of 10cm and grazing out to 4cm. This will give you maximum growth and grazing efficiency. If you have heavy covers, don’t be afraid to mow them down and bale them. It’s important though that they are taken out quickly and not left to cut with silage in three to four weeks. A paddock cut this week should be ready to graze again in three weeks’ time. If taking silage off paddocks, apply some P and K and some extra nitrogen to compensate for taking the silage crop off. These surplus bales will be excellent quality silage to feed to weanlings or calved cows next winter.

Reseeding:

There has been a lot of ploughing and reseeding taking place on farms, with farmers taking advantage of excellent ground conditions. Reseeded swards will far outperform old pasture in production and quality but the job needs to be carried out correctly. Reseeding is a costly investment (€270-€300/ac) and cutting corners won’t achieve a successful outcome. In most cases, it is best to spray off with a glyphosate product to kill any dominant weeds and old grasses.

Sow late-heading varieties and use the Teagasc Pasture Profit Index (PPI) to pick your varieties and aim for the top of the list. Avoid too much tetraploids in heavy ground. Apply 2.5 bags of 10:10:20/acre at sowing time and 2t lime/acre depending on soil pH. You are aiming to get soil pH above 6.0. The seedbed should be rolled to create a firm seedbed. A post-emergence spray is extremely important and this is the best time to kill any seedling docks. Take care not to let the weeds get too strong before spraying. Remember that modern ryegrasses are bred for high nitrogen application so it’s very important that you feed the new sward in the first years or the new grass will die out and your hard work and investment lost.

BPS:

Have you completed your BPS application? The closing is next Monday 15 May. Get your application in. Amendments can be made to land up until the end of May but your application has to be in by the deadline.