Dairy management: to skip or not to skip?

Too much grass at this time of year is a problem. It will lead to more stem in the pre-grazing sward, poor cleanouts and slower than normal regrowth.

The fear is that before you know it, rotation length will have gone to 30 plus days, and pre-grazing yield will have gone to 2,000kg/ha or more, rather than the desired 25 days and 1,600kg/ha pre-grazing yields.

The reality is that many farmers are already in this situation. My thinking over the last few weeks was that growth rates are bound to reduce soon and the surplus will be eaten into and things will be back to normal. Or in other words, if the surplus isn’t too big, do nothing.

However, soil temperatures are between 1°C and 3°C degrees higher than normal and growth rates have actually increased over the last three weeks.

Taking action

So when to take action? Should you skip over a paddock, or paddocks, for bale silage?

My thinking is to continue to play it safe and being a bit ahead of target is better than being a bit behind target.

Of course, you need to know what the target is. The Grass10 team, of which Irish Farmers Journal is a member has printed a useful table with target average farm cover (AFC) and rotation lengths based on farm stocking rates.

A farm stocked at three cows/ha now should have a cover of 250kg/cow. Being 10% higher than this would bring the AFC to 275kg/ha. Being 15% higher would bring AFC to 290kg/ha.

If AFC is 10% higher I would be comfortable to leave it at that.

However, if AFC is any higher than 10% I would skip over paddocks to bring it back to 10% above target.

The main issue now is the difficulty in getting fields closed for silage actually cut, as the weather has been a mix of continuous damp or severe downpours. Fresher weather is forecast for later in the week.

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