Q: My father and I only run bullocks on the land over the summer months but we would like to begin measuring the grass in order to better utilise it. The thing is we wouldn’t be in a position to buy a plate meter for measuring grass due to its cost. However, I do believe you can use a welly boot marked at intervals to measure grass, I was just wondering how I would go about measuring grass this way (ie, what is the process)?

A: To manage grassland you need to know three things – your field sizes, your stock’s grass requirement and your grass covers.

Area

There are smartphone apps that’ll enable you to estimate field and paddock sizes quite easily using satellite images. Make a list of your paddocks and their sizes (in hectares) using these.

Requirement

An animal will eat 2% of its body weight daily – so a 600kg bullock needs 12kg of grass dry matter daily.

Grass cover

To measure the grass itself, take a ruler into the paddock, or mark in the cm intervals on your welly, and estimate the average height of the grass there (in cm). Take four away from the figure and multiply by 250 to give you a kg DM/ha figure. Adjust based on the paddock area to give you total grass in the paddock. Work out your farm’s total grass supply and divide by total daily stock requirement to give ‘grazing days’. At this point in the year you should have 25 days’ worth of grazing if planning to keep cattle out until the end of the season. Manage your grass weekly based on your days ahead figure – check the Irish Farmers Journal in print and online for guidelines.