Grass: While the last week of bad weather will hamper early grazing plans on many farms, have a plan in place for when the weather and ground conditions improve.

Tailor this plan to your farm and try to push the boundaries a little.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

The aim on dry farms is to have 40% of the farm grazed by 10 March and 100% grazed by 1 April.

This changes to 20 March and 10 April on wetter farms.

Don’t use the silage pit as the gauge to let cattle out and if silage is left over it will keep and may be needed later in spring if weather turns really bad or better still could help reduce the amount of silage needed to be cut in 2022.

Getting some fields grazed early will allow for slurry to be spread and also stimulate some growth.

While fertiliser is extremely expensive on higher-stocked farms, urea should be in the yard at this stage ready to be spread at the rate of half a bag per acre once the weather, soil temperature and ground conditions improves.

You won’t grow enough grass on higher-stocked farms without fertiliser. Light cattle, like weanlings, are ideal to try out first as they will have a lower risk of poaching.

The later you leave turnout, the quicker you will need to graze the farm to hit targets.

Mart trade: The mart trade is continuing to perform strongly for all classes of stock.

Dry cow rings are especially lively with an abundance of factory agents, northern customers and feeders looking for short keep stock. Good-quality young continental cows are crossing the €2.50/kg mark, with heavy cows coming into great money.

It could be a good time to offload some empty autumn calving cows or any cows that have lost calves in the last few months. At current prices, it’s hard to see a margin in feeding them for an extra few months. Reducing stocking rate by offloading non-priority stock could also be a way of trying to deal with higher input costs in 2022.

BEEP: Some farmers have been enquiring as to when the new BEEP scheme will be open and what the requirements will be. While the details of the 2022 scheme haven’t been released yet, the advice is to weigh calves/weanlings before you sell them. Last year’s scheme stipulated that cows and calves must have been weighed on the same day and the 2022 scheme is likely to be similar.

Where autumn calves are being sold early, weigh them just in case and record the weights in the ICBF database.

Next webinar episode: The next spring series webinar takes place on Wednesday 23 February at 8pm on farmersjournal.ie. Topics up for discussion include winter finishing, beef market prospects and what’s in store for summer grazers in 2022. You can email questions you would like answered on the night to awoods@farmersjournal.ie or WhatsApp them to 086-836 6465.