The warm and dry weather of recent days has given farmers and everyone else some much needed respite from the rain.

With colder temperatures set to come in later this week, the warm spell will be short lived, and what good it’ll actually do in terms of enabling land to dry out is questionable.

At this stage in the year daylight hours are getting shorter and that has a big bearing on grass growth and the ability of land to dry out.

With soils in many parts of the country saturated, the grazing game has already prematurely ended on these farms.

Elsewhere though, on the freer draining farms there is more scope for extended grazing. Extending the rotation length into mid-November while ensuring sufficient grass for early turnout next spring is the objective.

Achieving this requires careful management of grass demand over the next few weeks as grass growth rates slow down.

Putting in additional feed such as meal and silage or zero grazed grass is one way to reduce demand for grass. Another way is to reduce stock numbers by selling cull cows.

What to do depends on how much grass is on the farm, what the future growth rate will be and how many cows are currently on the farm.

Measuring grass weekly or at least every 10 days will greatly increase the information available to farmers in order to make good decisions.

Farmers that measure grass and make better decisions with that information end up with more grass in the diet in spring and autumn, which reduces feed costs and increases animal performance.

A reasonable target is to keep grass in the diet up to mid-November and to feed as little silage as possible but as much as is necessary to achieve that goal.

Remember though that grass is far more valuable in spring, so if it means housing early to have more grass in spring then so be it.