Weather: Not everyone has been fortunate enough to receive rain to date, but it would be a cruel twist of fate if you don’t get some over the weekend. The weather pattern is set to change from continental-style thunderstorms to more normal Atlantic rain belts, bringing equal measures of happiness or sadness depending on your outlook for summer rain. Grassland management is outlined in more detail on pages 28, 29 and 31. Hopefully by next week nobody will be waiting for rain, but you will need at least 25mm to make a substantial difference to grass growth, and soil moisture deficits won’t go away at that. The biggest mistake you can make now is to blindly copy what others are doing. If you have little grass you must slow down the rotation by putting in a lot of supplementary feed. There is a great return on investment to feeding heavily after a drought when you have very little grass on the farm, provided that you don’t feed for any longer than you need to. However, if you have a decent level of grass, you must reduce supplementary feed. There is a very poor return on investment from feeding supplement when you have a lot of grass.
Nitrates derogation: By next year, all farmers in a nitrates derogation or who are stocked above 170kg organic nitrogen must keep fences 1.5m back from the top of drains and watercourses, cattle must not be let enter a watercourse to drink, troughs should be 20m away from watercourses and roadways should be cambered away from watercourses. This measure will affect most farmers but some more than others. The purpose is to prevent soiled water (which is high in nutrients) from running directly into streams and rivers.
On the roadway camber measure, the intention is that runoff should be diverted to the field rather than the drain so that soil can filter the water before it gets into streams. My understanding is that the camber doesn’t necessarily have to be sloped away from the stream; instead a kerb can be installed to keep the water out and then divert it to the field at various points along the road. Summer is the best time to tackle jobs like this. Carry out an assessment of your farm and decide what needs prioritising. If water troughs need to be installed, solar pumps or manual pumps could be an option depending on the size of the area and the number of stock to be fed. Water can still be extracted from streams and rivers, but cattle cannot enter them to drink.
Clover: As grass growth rates are expected to increase in coming weeks, there will be an opportunity to oversow clover into established swards. As it stands, clover is the only thing we know that can increase grass yield and milk production with potentially less inputs. It’s a proven technology but it’s not easy to get it established in existing swards. Management practices need to be tweaked to get it to take off. The key thing is regular grazing at light covers to ensure the clover seedling is not shaded out. Paddocks that have clover already established and evenly dispersed through the sward can be given half rate of nitrogen from now to the end of the spreading period. We will look at ways of establishing clover next week.
Opinion: special treatment for methane is good news for dairy