With this week seeing the start of September, it’s important to assess where you are with regards to building grass and achieving your target average farm cover (AFC).

Ahead of target

A general rule is not to have exceeded an AFC of 1,050kg/ha before September, unless you are a farmer stocked close to 4 LU/ha for the remainder of the year.

Lowly stocked farmers finding themselves carrying an AFC of 1,000kg or above should take surplus as soon as the opportunity arises.

Note that ground is starting to get saturated in places, which will effect growth rate and with the shortening of daylight hours, growth on farms is likely to only drop off for the rest of the year.

This should be taken into account when deciding to remove surplus.

However, if these weather conditions continue, cutting strong paddocks and feeding them back as bales may be the better option.

Where you have to hold on to the high cover, ensure that all heavy covers are carried on dry fields with good access.

Heavy soil field pre-grazing yields should not exceed 1,500kg/ha in the month of September and 1,100kg/ha if you hope to graze them in October.

Behind target

An AFC below 750kg will be too low going into September, with the exception of farms with land to come back, such as third-cut silage or reseeded ground.

Be careful when counting on these, as there is very little opportunities to cut third-silage at the moment and the longer it’s left uncut, the slower it will be at growing back.

Also, looking at reseeds, they got a great take this autumn, but, again, with the weather conditions at the moment, unless they went in late July or early August, it may not be worth planning on having them back in the milking platform this year.

So if you find yourself behind target, the earlier you act the better.

Reduce demand by upping supplementation. This may be done by feeding strong for a week, going in with silage and getting back on track quickly.

Or just upping the meal in the parlour over the next few weeks and building gradually.

Other options that may need to be looked at are selling cull cows, removing young stock from the milking platform or zero-grazing grass from an out-block.