Everything has risen in the past week – soil temperatures, growth rates, milk yield and the amount of daylight hours. As a result, farmers are in better humour, but the scars of record winter rainfall persist. Met Eireann says rainfall between December and February has been about twice the norm, and this wet trend continued right up to last week.

With land drying out, the focus for the past week has been to get everything out – cows, fertiliser, slurry – and cut out silage. They used to say that the difference between a good farmer and an average farmer is a week – the good farmer being more pro-active, responding to changes in the weather sooner and making changes accordingly.

Of course, the speed at which your land dries out has a huge bearing on your ability to implement changes. You can only do your best with the soil type you have.

At a farm walk last week it was said that the spring rotation planner is an “optimist’s guide to grazing”. Only a handful got to stick to the plan this spring anyway, and even then fairly severe poaching was done on a lot of the grazed area.

The need for tighter cost control and higher milk constituents was never more important than this spring, yet nature has intervened to reduce the amount of grass in the diet so costs are already higher and milk constituents are back considerably on this time last year. So what can we do now to rescue this spring?

Grazing plan

There is a lot of grass on most farms. Farmers who started closing paddocks in mid-October and who have less than 20% grazed now should have average farm covers of around 800kg to 900kg still. So there is plenty of grass for now. The issue will be in the second round because the first paddocks to be grazed then either have a very low cover on them now or in some cases have yet to be grazed.

The 10-year average grass growth rate for the next four weeks is 35kg/day. I expect this year’s average growth to be less than this, though, as less fertiliser has been spread to date and the proportion of farms grazed is lower also. Remember, grass that has been grazed grows much faster than grass that has yet to be grazed.

We need a cover of 1,000kg/ha on the highest paddock at the start of the second round, and the second rotation should last about 20 days. Farm cover per cow should be in or around 150kg/cow. With less than 20% of many farms grazed by now, we need high growth rates on what is being grazed to ensure there is enough grass back for round two.

Lower covers recover faster after grazing compared with higher covers. The whole farm should receive nitrogen – 46 units of urea/acre now, if none has been spread up to now. If some was spread in February, go again with 30 or 40 units.

The response to this nitrogen is higher now at about 15kg of grass per kg of nitrogen. Younger grass varieties grow faster too, so concentrate most of the grazing on fields that have been reseeded in the last few years. And, obviously, try to limit poaching as much as possible as this reduces subsequent growth.

Poaching

Some farmers are wondering about what to do with land that has already been poached.

Despite the temptation to go rolling, this will actually do more harm than good. In the short term, the best policy is to spread one or two bags per acre of 18:6:12 on poached land, on top of the nitrogen it is due to get. Try to give this area the longest time to recover before the next grazing. Maybe fence off the worst affected parts of the field, usually the third of the field closest to gaps or beside hedges.

While we don’t have control over the weather, being able to graze poached areas in dry weather at the next grazing is critical. I know many farmers with poached fields are really worried about bad weather when it comes to grazing these fields again. The advice is clear – you can poach once and get away with it, but you cannot afford to poach the same fields twice in succession.

Farmer Focus: Aidan McCarthy, Schull, Co Cork

Farming next to the ocean in west Cork, this spring has been a big challenge for Aidan McCarthy. Like almost everyone else, he has failed to achieve his grazing targets.

“I was hell-bent on getting over 30% of the farm grazed in February but after struggling to get through 12% of the farm in the first three weeks in February, I was forced into rehousing the herd fully for about two weeks.”

The cows went back out again last Thursday but heavy damage was done, even though they were only out for a few hours. They went back out again over last weekend and are now back into the normal grazing routine.

With the high milk prices in 2014, Aidan bought a pit of maize silage and put distillers grains in with a pit of grass silage. Neither pit was touched in 2015 so Aidan fed this out when the cows were housed. The maize and grass silage were mixed together in a mixer wagon at a rate of 55% maize silage on a fresh-weight basis.

With over 80% of the farm left to be grazed in the first round, the pressure is on to get area grazed and to get the re-growths moving. All the silage has been cut from the diet and cows are getting just 2kg of meal in the parlour. Aidan still hopes to start the second round in or around 10 April.

“It’s a tall order but I have a high stocking rate and a lot of the herd calved so the demand is high and they will move through area fast. A full bag of urea was spread on two thirds of the farm a few weeks ago, with the rest being spread this week so the farm will be well set up for growth.”

He will begin to follow the cows with nitrogen in the next week. When all 170 cows are calved the stocking rate will be 3.6 cows/ha and over 80% of the herd is calved now.

“I will push cows harder in the second round. Being a bit tight for grass then is probably no harm as it ensures good quality in the next rounds. I’m not as concerned about hitting the residuals in the first round but I will be making sure they clean out well in the next round.”

The part of the farm grazed in early February has been poached fairly heavily but Aidan says he won’t do anything to this area but will try to graze it in dry weather the next time and says if he can do this, the cows will level the bumps out themselves. He thinks rolling will only add to compaction of the soil.

Last week, Aidan’s cows were milking 23 litres per day at 4.36% fat and 3.27% protein. With the return to grass full-time, he expects a lift in yield and solids. SCC is 95.