Grass has started to head out on a lot of farms this week and where fields haven’t been grazed tight in spring, stem is starting to come into many swards. There are two ways of dealing with this – either take out heavy covers as silage or top after grazing stemmy paddocks.

On lower-stocked farms it is harder to graze very tight as paddocks need to be small to match smaller groups. Once topped, these fields should get an application of nitrogen to maintain leaf in the sward and make sure animals are gaining maximum weight.

Make sure the topper or disc mower is set to cut at a low level. Disc mowers will do the best job. Aim to cut at the same level as you would graze to; around 4cm. If these fields are not topped, the proportion of stem will increase and grass will die off, meaning the field will have reduced production.

Try to stagger topping in different stages as topping a lot of fields at once could delay re-growths in dry weather and lead to a grass shortage in the next few weeks. Avoid making priority stock like beef steers or heifers graze out this stemmy material as it will hit performance. On farms where there are autumn dry cows, this stemmy grass is perfect material to dry off cows and these cows can be made graze out this material.

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