Average air temperatures are running slightly ahead of normal but are still less than 10C. Warmer nights are forecast for the next few days so mean air temperatures should rise leading to increases in grass growth.

Most farms are now growing more grass than they require and are actively managing surpluses by taking out paddocks for silage and spraying off paddocks for reseeding.

The first of the calves are now being weaned off milk on dairy farms. Best practice is to use weights rather than age as the determining factor of when to wean. The target weaning weight for Holstein Friesian calves is 100kg and for crossbred calves is 75 to 80kg.

Some farmers will use a weighband to check calves weight while they are drinking and then draft out the calves that are at target weight into a different group and slowly wean them off milk.

With milk quotas gone, there is an incentive to wean calves earlier than normal so as to supply more milk but this should be avoided as it will make it harder for them to achieve their target weights at breeding of 330kg and 300kg for Holstein Friesian and Jersey crossbred respectively.

On fertilizer usage, the recommendations for silage ground is 100 units of nitrogen, 30 units of phosphorus and 100 units of potassium per acre. How much of this you can spread depends on your nitrates plan and how much slurry you can apply.

This is the best time to close up fields for silage for a late May early June cut. Fields closed later than now will have a reduced yield.

The recommendation for fertilizer use on grazing ground varies depending on stocking rate but for most farmers the advice is to go with 30 units of nitrogen per acre for the next few months. On drier farms, where sulphur deficiency is an issue, 20 units per acre of sulphur should be applied. This can be supplied in a nitrogen plus suplur compound such as ASN or SulfaCAN.