October has landed and, by and large, it has come on softly, with some above-average temperatures and some pleasant sunshine.

Whatever this weekend brings weather-wise may turn things around very quickly, as it takes very little to wet ground now with poorer drying conditions.

October is an important month in the grazing calendar, as it is the coming weeks that establishes how the farm will be set up for grazing in spring 2025.

All farms should commence closing of paddocks from now on, with the aim being to hold the rotation length to 40 days - ie grazing up until 10 November.

This will not be a reality for all, but efforts should be maintained to keep some lighter stock at grass as long as possible, both to reduce feed costs and slurry storage, but more importantly to get any heavy covers grazed off for the winter.

Grazing

The paddocks that should be grazed in the next two weeks or so should be some of the middling paddocks. These are the paddocks that have ok access, aren’t right beside the yard, but not at the furthest point and are relatively dry.

These will be the paddocks that will hopefully be grazed between early and mid-March at covers of 800kg to 1,000kg DM/ha.

Hold off on grazing any reseeds or clover paddocks just yet, as you will want to keep covers low on these to allow light to the base of the plant for tillering and to prevent grasses smothering clovers.

Tight on grass

We had a question into Farm Tech Talk this week regarding a farmer tight on grass. The farmer in question had 650kg DM/ha of a cover and was weighing up his options.

The first was to house their youngstock, with the second (less preferred option to the farmer) being to house cows at night and feed silage. The farmer didn’t like the idea of an additional month of cleaning cubicles - and who could blame them.

At 650kg DM/ha, the paddocks on the upper end cover wise are only at 1,300kg to 1,400kg DM/ha, which cows will mow through at this time of the year.

We did not have any information regarding silage stocks or quality, nor slurry capacity, three key factors when considering the above.

If good-quality silage was available, then, yes, youngstock could go inside, though the effect this will have on grass demand could be negligible.

The farm should ideally be closing with its current cover, meaning growth and demand will have to equal each other for the remainder of the grazing season, something that will be very difficult owing to the shortening days and the already low farm cover (remember, grass grows grass).

Saying this, an extra month indoors, even if it is only by night, could push slurry storage capacity to the limit, as we are a long way from January spreading dates.

The first port of call would be to take animals out of the scenario through sales. Empty cows or store cattle can be offloaded in marts to try to ease the burden where silage and grass stocks are tight.

If you haven’t already done so, it’s critical that you complete a fodder budget to know what is in your yard and draw up a contingency plan to supplement and deficits, be it through the sale of stock, purchasing additional concentrates or additional fodder.