In pictures: grass cover recovers at Greenfield

Since the start of May, about 4kg of meal and 4kg of round baled silage per cow has been fed to the Greenfield herd, as the very dry weather in the east reduced grass growth down below 50kg per day.

On Tuesday this week, that supplement was pulled out of the diet following the completion of the weekly farm grass cover, which showed there was enough grass back on the farm.

Despite the fact rain has not yet arrived, farm management decided there are five or six paddocks with near enough the ideal pre-grazing cover (1,500kg), so the decision was taken to go back to grass only.

As the farm was stocked at 4.5 cows/hectare, the 50kg per day level of growth was not sufficient to meet the daily grass requirement of the herd – hence the decision to supplement.

Grass cover fell below 110kg per cow, which triggered the decision about 10 days ago to pull up the handbrake on grass allocation to allow the farm build cover again.

The farm cover this week showed the grass per cow is now back up to 170kg/cow and the grass wedge is nicely balanced.

Stocking rate is now four cows/ha, with all short-term silage paddocks back in the grazing mix.

In total over the last 10 days, about 40kg of meal was fed per cow and 60 round bales of silage.

With the heat, less grass and more supplement, milk solids per cow dropped down 0.10kg MS/cow over the week. That meant milk solids dropped from 1.97 to 1.87kg MS/cow/day.

The last protein was 3.67% and the last fat test was 4.68%.

All eyes remain on the weather forecast in the hope of some rain or the feed could be back in again. The new reseeds have peeped up, so a drop of rain would be very welcome in that field also.