Grass quality at the moment is a very mixed bag. During the dry weather, the grass plant became stressed and produced a seed head at a very early stage of the growth cycle.

The production of stem to support the seed head greatly reduces the dry matter digestibility (DMD) of the grass.

In some cases, aftergrass has a lot of stem, but there is also some excellent-quality grass available.

Light covers

Grazing these at light covers below 1,300kg DM/ha can be successful, with no pre-mowing or topping required after.

Walking the farm regularly or at least every five days will allow you to assess both grass availability and grass quality.

Keep average farm cover above 500kg DM/ha and target a C/LU of 160kg to 180kg DM/LU on dairy farms and 12 to 14 days ahead on beef farms.

If you have a surplus of grass, try to cut the paddocks with heavy covers and poor-quality grass.

Fertiliser

Now is the time to plan your last two applications of nitrogen (N) in order to get the most out of them.

Once we go into September, response to N reduces rapidly. For this reason, the earlier in September the better.

If you target the last N application in the first week of September, that leaves one other application between now and the end of August.

Target one unit of nitrogen per day until your planned last application.

Clover swards do not require as much N as non-clover swards. Nine or 10 units of N per acre on these swards is plenty.

If spreading soiled water or watery slurry with low emission slurry spreading (LESS) equipment (for example a dribble bar), there is roughly five to seven units of N per 1,000 gallons of slurry.

At a rate of 2,500 gallons per acre, this is between 12.5 and 17.5 units of N per acre, which is more than enough for clover swards.