Our grazing season started on 2 April, and it has been a bit of a roller coaster since then.

Although conditions were far from ideal at the beginning of the month, grazing was still the best option as we needed to start creating a grass wedge on our grazing platform.

Additionally, it reduced the amount of bought-in feed required. Usually, turnout on our farm is around mid-March, with cows grazing full-time from the beginning of April, so the delay to grazing was adding costs to our business.

On turnout, cows were given access to a field earmarked for reseeding this spring, as an area of sacrifice ground is always required for the first grazing.

Unfortunately, in the first week, cows slipped back in milk by 1 litre per cow per day –contrary to a normal year, but likely due to the unsettled conditions.

However, in the second week of grazing, things seemed to pick up, with cows up by 1.6 litres per cow per day compared to when they were housed full-time.

During this time, both pre-grazing covers, and post-grazing covers were ideal, and multiple access points to each grazing ensured field damage was minimal.

Saturated ground

Just when we thought things were getting better, on the 16 April we had 14mm of rain in one day, completely saturating the ground.

While we thought February was a challenging month with a total of 80.2mm of rainfall, we had over 70mm of rain within the first half of April and that created extremely difficult grazing conditions. Despite that, cows did remain out for at least a few hours daily.

There are several aspects that have greatly helped us this year to keep the cows at grass.

Firstly, multiple access points have been vital in limiting ground damage. We have been working on lanes and improving the number of access points to each grazing block over the last number of years. Thankfully, this has paid off well this spring.

On-off grazing

Secondly, we practiced on/off grazing, ensuring the cows were hungry heading out to grass. Once the cows had grazed for a minimum of 3 hours, they were then brought back inside.

While this is a very effective method to limit ground damage, it does have several disadvantages. In particular, it requires a smaller grazing area and more access points.

Lastly, we installed an on-farm weather station several years ago.

Weather varies greatly between areas, particularly within recent years, and knowing how much rain has fallen allows us to have a greater insight into ground conditions without having to physically walk fields.

I had doubts whether I could justify the expense of the on-farm weather station, but it became more affordable when I persuaded my three sisters it was an ideal birthday present for dad.

So I only ended up paying for a quarter of it - in typical farming fashion, it is all about working smarter not harder.

Milk yields

Cows are grazing full-time from the 20 April, and silage has been removed from the diet.

Milk yields are increasing daily (what we usually expect to see at the start of the grazing season) and feeding rate is down to 0.16kg/litre.

Hopefully the rest of this year’s grazing goes a lot smoother than it has so far - for the sake of both cows and humans.

Jessica Pollock.