Even the best laid plans have gone awry this spring. February has been extremely cold. Mean air temperatures were between 2°C and 3°C lower than normal for most of the country. The extreme cold at the end of the month and the beginning of March really brought down the mean temperatures.

That said, February was actually drier than normal, with below average rainfall recorded in nearly all parts of the country.

The result of the cold weather is that grass growth rates are considerable lower than normal. Looking at data from Grass+ page, average growth rates are between zero and five kilos per day when they would normally be between 10 and 15kg/day.

The result of this is that average farm cover (the amount of grass on farms) is dropping much faster than normal. This is because as fields were grazed in February, they didn’t regrow to the same extent as normal. Also, some paddocks that had a high cover in January have lost some cover.

So what can farmers do now? It all depends on where the farm is at now. And to know this, the farm must be walked. Even if not every paddock is measured, it is important to walk the fields and build a picture in your head of where the farm is at. Of course, scoring each paddock and finding the average farm cover and growth rate will give you better information.

The other thing you need to know is how much of the farm you have grazed. The normal target would be to have nearly 50% grazed by now and have an average farm cover of between 650 and 750kg/ha.

Most farmers have less ground than this grazed. Many that have reached this target have a very low average farm cover of around 550 to 600kg/ha. This is dangerously close to the magic number of 500kg/ha – below which you shouldn’t go.

If nearly at 500kg/ha, you will need to match demand with growth. This will require heavy supplementation with silage and meal until growth improves. The good news is that grass growth has increased over the weekend as the weather got milder.

Also, because these farmers have a high percentage of their farms grazed, they will be generating higher growth rates. Grazed fields grow faster than ungrazed fields.

But most farmers have a lot less of the farm grazed. I would encourage these farmers to increase the amount of area being grazed now. This will allow this part of the farm to grow faster and recover in time for the second round. But this is easier said than done as ground conditions are tricky and more rain is forecast.

In both scenarios, the start of the second rotation will need to be delayed until such time as the first grazed paddocks have a cover of 1,000 to 1,100kg/ha and growth rates are equal to demand. How long to delay it will depend on what happens to growth between now and the end of the month. It’s too early to be definite about it yet. But farmers need to be thinking about it.

From a growth perspective, having enough fertiliser out will be critical. If the nitrogen isn’t in the soil then growth rate will be reduced – prolonging the problem. At this stage, farmers should have close to 70 units/acre of nitrogen out now. Stick to urea based products as CAN is too unstable in the soil when the weather is mixed.

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