Average grass growth rate for the past week is averaging 68kg/day, but I expect this to increase further in the coming week.

While the west of Ireland got soaked with heavy rain on Monday, most of the rest of the country experienced a wet, damp and clammy day. This is sure to drive on grass growth for at least the next 10 days, as warm dry weather is forecast for the rest of the week.

Driving around the country over the past week, I see many herds grazing high covers in excess of 1,600kg/ha. Grazing these covers now is detrimental to milk yield and fat and protein percent.

Not only that, it will be detrimental at the next grazing also because the clean-out on a high cover is poor, leaving a lot of stemmy grass with a higher proportion of stem to leaf at the next grazing.

This poor clean-out that you experience with high covers (white/yellow base) also reduces subsequent growth rate, as it takes much longer for the grass to recover after grazing.

Knock-out punch

Grazing these covers now is like giving a knock-out punch to performance for the summer. High covers must be skipped over now.

What to do with them depends on your stocking rate. Farms that are highly stocked need to cut them out as soon as possible to get them back growing nice leafy grass again.

Lower-stocked farms have more options. They could cut them out now for good-quality bales or leave them sit there a bit longer and cut them with the first-cut silage. Lower-stocked farms are going to generate surplus again soon, so leaving them sit there might make more sense.

At this stage, a low-stocked farm is any farm stocked less than 3.5 cows/ha on the milking block. These farms only have a demand of about 60kg/day, if they are feeding one or two kilos of meal.

Higher-stocked farms are those stocked over 4.0 cows/ha. They have a demand of 70kg/day. Increasing the stocking rate by delaying cutting of surplus grass as silage will push these farms into the red territory, where they need growth rates to be over 80kg per day to match demand.

While growth rates might remain high, if the weather changes and growth slows they could be left in a tight situation. Also, delaying cutting date will slow down regrowths. So, on highly stocked farms, surplus grass should be removed this week, as the forecast is good for the rest of the week.