Grass: The summer is moving along and as we head towards mid-August, the focus will soon be turning towards building up grass for autumn. There is more than likely just six weeks of good grass growth left in this season, because growth rates usually drop off quickly after September. While we might be expecting a good back-end given the very wet July and early August, there are no guarantees of that. In any case, a good back-end after a wet summer is unlikely to grow more grass, but it might mean better utilisation of what grass is there. The target for most farmers is to have an average farm cover of 1,100kg to 1,200kg/ha by the end of September. This means grazing covers of 2,200kg to 2,400kg/ha around then. Getting there involves gradually extending the rotation length. Where one was getting three grazings per paddock, they should soon be getting four grazings per paddock and so on. Paddocks that might have been considered for round bales three weeks ago will now be grazed to help slow the rotation length. The differential between growth and demand is smaller on higher-stocked farms, so they will need additional feed if they are to extend the rotation length. The earlier this feed is put in the better, because it will have a faster impact on building covers when growth is good.

Scanning: The scanning season has already started, particularly in herds further south where the breeding season started and ended earlier. There needs to be at least four weeks between the last service date and the pregnancy test, whether that is with ultrasound scanning or milk pregnancy tests. In-calf heifers will have to be scanned to check for pregnancy. Armed with results, it’s important to analyse the figures. The key ones are overall empty rate and while the target here is 10%, it’s important to look at it alongside the length of the breeding season. Achieving a good empty rate is less impressive if cows have been breeding for 16 weeks versus 11 weeks. Conception rate to first service is another important metric, because it shows how fertile the cows are and how accurate the heat detection is. The target here is 60%. Six-week in-calf rate is another important metric. This is the percentage of cows bred in the herd that went in-calf inside the first six weeks. The target here is 72% to 75%. Go through the late-calving and empty cows and heifers and analyse potential reasons why they didn’t perform well. In some cases, they will have calved late or be underweight at breeding, so will have had a bad start. Fertility is such an important component of grass-based farming. It’s important that lessons are drawn from every season.

Financial planning: This week’s Focus on pages 39 to 45 is on milking equipment. The costs of building work and equipment has increased considerably since 2020. For major projects like that undertaken by the Dunne family on pages 44 and 45, there could be 12 months of financial planning before drawdown between costings, budgets and gathering data for the bank. Keep the bank informed of the long-term plan so they can prepare for it at their end.