Many farmers have cattle housed now, as the rain continues to soften land and make grazing difficult. Last Thursday saw a deluge of rainfall, with up to 37mm falling in parts of the east, which put paid to a lot of farmers’ grazing plans.

Only those on very dry farms are able to keep cows out now to clean up the remaining paddocks. Growth rates are remaining quite strong for the time of year, which is down to good soil temperatures averaging 7.9°C in weather stations around the country.

These good growth rates are great to have for paddocks closed for the winter and come next spring will be an excellent source of energy for a freshly calved cow, if weather allows for grazing.

Many of the farmers I have spoken to during the year plan on calving more cows next spring, so good covers on paddocks will be essential to feed these extra mouths. The average farm cover (AFC) is what you should look at when closing, with many setting a target of 600kg DM/ha of an AFC.

If you have a high stocking rate or a compact calving herd, consider setting the AFC a little higher.

Some people who have housed stock early and still have some paddocks to graze out are using young stock or sheep where available to finish off the job, as these lighter animals won’t do as much damage.

The main thing is not to graze closed paddocks again and don’t let sheep into paddocks that are closed for the spring cows, where ground conditions will allow spring grazing.

For those of you still milking indoors, try and feed out the best of the quality round-baled silage that was made during the year.

If you have cut and baled covers of less than 2,000kg, then it will be very good feed when supplemented with meal and should hold production.

In south Tipperary our farmer has been bringing in cows by night since Thursday onwards, because it just got too wet.

From today (Wednesday), cows are in full time on maize (25%) and silage (75%). He still has quota to fill and cows are milking 12.42 litres at 5.14% fat and 4.12% protein (1.18kg MS). He has two paddocks not grazed with covers of 1,800kg DM/ha because it’s just too wet.

Our man in Carlow has a growth rate of 15kg DM/ha/day and plans on having all cows dried off tomorrow. His average farm cover at closing is a little lower than he would like at 550kg DM/ha, but he feels it is not that big of an issue because it is only the second last week in November.

Fergal Coughlan, Farm Manager, Clonakilty Dairy Research Farm

Average farm cover is currently 830kg DM/ha. We have one heavy cover of 2,800kg DM/ha to graze, so housing should take place early next week, when AFC will be down to 700kg DM/ha. Our growth rate this week is 22kg DM/ha. Cows are in by night and out by day and are on a diet of 5kg silage, 8kg grass and 1kg concentrate. Last week, during the heavy rain they were in day and night. The reason they are grazing such high covers now is because we had to graze light covers in autumn to get enough area grazed and the heavier paddocks bulked up. All the cows will be dried off by 10 December. We have been drying off 20 a week since the end of October, in order to give students a chance to dry cows off themselves. Drying off is tailored to calving date, we allocate a dry period of nine weeks for cows and 11 weeks for heifers. There are 60 cows now milking out of 180. The cows remaining are milking 11.2 litres at 5.58% fat, 4.18% protein and 93 SCC. Breeding went very well here, with 84% in calf in the first six weeks, which means calving will be very compact next spring. Calving is due to start from 25 January so we need a good supply of grass for cows. We got the results back for the silage, it is 69.4 DMD, 26.6 DM and 13% protein. We are not that happy with it so we’ll have to monitor cow condition closely over winter and feed accordingly.

Chris Catherwood, Farm Manager, Ards Peninsula, Co Down

Cows are still out at grass during the day from 7.30am until 4pm. Cows are entering covers of 1,300kg DM/ha and are not really doing any damage. There are plenty of entrances to paddocks and if cows don’t do a good enough job cleaning them out we let the heifers in to finish the job. Cows are due to start calving from 24 January. We dried off 20 thin cows last week, but in general cow condition is very good. Now we are drying off cows according to calving dates, today (Wednesday) 30 cows were pulled out of the main herd, they are now being milked once a day and are getting no meal. On Friday they will get Boviseal and Cepravin and they will be indoors for the winter. The plan is to dry off 20-30 cows every week and milking should end by 15 December. There are about 10 days of grazing left and cows now get high-quality round bale silage at night. The milking cows are getting 4kg of a 20% nut and are milking 15.8 litres at 5.1% fat, 3.76% protein (1.44kg MS) and 115 SCC. The feeding level will be dropped by 1kg next week as yield continues to reduce naturally. We are doing some building work here in preparation for more cows calving next spring. Currently, we are milking 206 cows, but plan on having 250 next year.

Padraig Cummins, Derrydonnell, Oranmore, Co Galway

Cows are still out grazing full-time and all the cows were dried off last week because we are under pressure with milk quota. They were put on a restricted diet of grass and poor-quality bales. I have a very dry farm and was lucky when we were holding the cows on a paddock that we didn’t get much rain. We used an antibiotic tube and Boviseal. Cow condition is fairly good and now that cows are dried off condition should improve. We didn’t seem to get as much rain as the east of the country over the past week and grazing should continue for another 10 days. Cows get a 24-hour allocation on covers of 2,000kg and are cleaning out paddocks well. We had a very dry September which slowed growth, but things changed in October and we got huge growth rates, which helped build covers. The average farm cover was 706kg DM/ha as of 14 November and I plan on getting this down to 550kg DM/ha. Over the winter I will feed 2kg of concentrates to thin cows. Last year, I had an issue with cows becoming very thin before calving. I had the silage tested and found that everything was okay, but it was very wet which meant that cows had to eat twice as much of it. I will now test the silage every year in advance. This year, we milked 170 cows, expansion is planned for next year and there are 215 animals in calf between cows and heifers.

Danny Bermingham, Mountrivers, Doonbeg, Co Clare

We have the cows in since 3 November. We are on heavy land here and usually housing can happen as early as 20 October, so it has been a good year. The closing cover was 495kg DM/ha and I reckon the AFC is up at 600kg DM/ha now. There was no damage done to paddocks this autumn, which should make a big difference next spring. It can be difficult to get cows out early in the spring and this year it was April. We grew 11t of DM this year and some paddocks grew 14.5-15t. There is still a lot of reseeding to be done so the farm has huge potential. There are 45 cows still milking and they are producing 11 litres at 4.69% fat, 3.86% protein and SCC. They are getting 2kg of meal and good-quality silage. We made 360 surplus bales and they should come in useful next spring. We also make a pit of silage, but usually go for bulk with this rather than quality because we never know how long the winter will be. I have sent away silage samples and I am looking forward to the results. We are drying off 10 cows at a time – we usually pick out the cows producing 10 litres or less. They are dried off after milking, which helps a lot. Fluke levels are high in Munster this year, so once cows are dried they will get Zanil first, in two weeks they will get Fasinex 240 and a worm dose three days later.