The Grass Week: supplementing at grass and the importance of allocations

For many around the country, the recent moisture deficit has meant having to feed stock extra concentrates, silage or some other feed source to stretch their rotation length.

The problem when supplementing at a high level is that utilisation of grass can drop, resulting in wasted feed and poor graze-outs.

In this case, the benefits of supplementing significantly reduce.

However, for farmers, short feed graze-outs in general aren’t a problem, as pre-grazing yields are normally below the target of 1,400kg/ha.

Stakes

This creates its own problem, as you may be supplementing with silage or increasing concentrate levels in the parlour, but find stock are still going through ground too fast, in which case the reel of wire and pigtail stakes may need to come back out.

Allocations are key and important to get right, as you don’t want to hit production or waste grass.

The simplest way to ensure you are not going through too much ground each day is to slow the rotation.

Set your rotation length to 25 days. So for a 100ac grazing platform, you should only allocate and graze 4ac/day and then supplement to make up any shortfall.

If you are measuring grass and are familiar with the Pasturebase app, you have a great tool at your fingertips.

The planner button on the app gives you predicted cover on each paddock you are about to graze, taking into account your growth since your last farm walk.

It also will tell you how many grazings that the stock should get out of the paddock. Note, if the supplementation levels has been changed since your last walk, it should be updated on the app beforehand.

Knowledge

This now gives you the knowledge as to how many grazings the cows will get out of the paddock and how to allocate the grass.

For example, if the planner says there is one day of grazing in a paddock, you can then half the paddock into two grazings and know that the stock have enough feed along with the supplementation you have allocated on the system.

This planner will also give you an idea of what the pre-yields are likely to be over the next few days. If you see these dropping below the 1,200kg/ha mark, you can see you may need to up your current level of supplementation.