The total amount of pasture grown on the Teagasc Clover 150 programme farms in 2024 will exceed the 2023 level, according to Teagasc’s Mike Egan.

Speaking at the Teagasc national dairy conference in Limerick in November, Mike said that good growth rates in the autumn boosted grass growth for the year as a whole.

At the end of November, cumulative pasture growth was 12.9t DM/ha on average on the programme farms, while the programme farms grew an average of 12.8t DM/ha in 2023.

In 2023, 65% of the farms' area had clover content, with an average clover content of 23% within that area.

For 2024, the analysis conducted by the Teagasc team shows that percentage area of the programme farm with clover increased to 75% but that the proportion of clover in this area decreased to 20%.

Mike said that these results are unsurprising given the cold and wet spring. He said that when they compare the year as a whole, there was an 8% reduction in clover in spring, a 4% reduction in summer and a 1% reduction in autumn, giving an annual reduction of 3%.

Also speaking at the workshop was Limerick farmers Robert and Denis O’Dea, who are farming in partnership together with Denis’s father.

Denis said that paddocks on their farm are ranked into three categories; no clover, some clover and high clover and that fertiliser application rates vary depending on the category.

Robert said they aimed to have a cover of no more than 800kg DM/ha on the high clover paddocks on 1 December in order to prevent shading of the clover plant over the winter.

Mike Egan said that carrying over a higher cover could be OK, provided that the field is grazed off in early March, suggesting 10 March as the cut-off to graze higher covers of grass/clover.

Across the Clover 150 programme farms an average of 182kg N/ha was applied in 2024, which is an increase on the 156kg N/ha applied in 2023 but Mike said this was required due to the lower levels of biological N fixing from clover and lower mineralisation also.

He said there was a 22% reduction in mineralisation and a 53% reduction in fixation in 2024 compared to the three year average of 2021 to 2023.