Heavy rain over the weekend across the country, but particularly in the southwest has made ground conditions challenging.

After a pet day on Saturday grazing was called off on Sunday with many places getting 10mm to 20mm of rain in the space of a few hours.

If ground is saturated then the shed is the best place for cows. However, the best farmers will continue to check out conditions after each milking to check if conditions are good enough for a return to grazing.

This might involve walking three or four paddocks or maybe even sections of paddocks that are known to be drier than other parts.

The objective is to keep grass in the diet each day if at all possible. Farmers do this for the sake of the animal, because grass is a much higher quality feed than silage and is also less than half of the cost.

Farmers that are good at grazing will say that the decision about whether to graze or not cannot be made while standing in the yard, it must be made out in the field.

They say this because ground can often be surprisingly dry, even after heavy rain. It’s obviously farm specific and some heavier farms will take a lot longer to dry out than lighter soils.

Grazing tips

1. If conditions are dodgy, use on/off grazing to minimise damage to the land. This involves using one or two three hour grazing bouts. Research has shown that cows will eat 90% in two three hour periods as they would in 24 hours.

2. When using on/off grazing, make sure cows go out to the field with an appetite. If they are full of silage they will have little interest in grazing, do more walking and poaching.

3. Use temporary fences to allocate grass for each grazing and back-fence to prevent cows from walking over previously grazed areas.

4. Use temporary spur roads to get cows to the back of paddocks. These can be created by erecting two temporary fences about 1m apart and getting cows to walk in single file. The rut which is created will fill in with grass.

5. Use multiple access points in paddocks to prevent one gap from getting over-used and abused.