Dairy Management: crucial few weeks for grass

The next three or four weeks are crucial from a cow performance and farm profit point of view and the biggest factor determining success will be the amount of grass in the diet.

Getting grass right is notoriously difficult and in fact, getting it right is probably impossible. A better term might be getting it least wrong.

The last few weeks have been brilliant from a grazing point of view, with many herds out day and night and no damage being done.

Cows are milking well and are under little pressure and this is showing in body condition score. It is the amount of grass in the diet that’s making cows milk well as it is a high energy and high protein feed.

Hallmark

Long may it last, one might say. Making it last and keeping grass in the diet will be the hallmark of success this spring.

Teagasc research shows that feeding inferior quality silage (all silage, including maise silage is inferior to spring grass) will have a disproportionate impact on peak performance and body condition score as we head towards the breeding season.

While grazing conditions have been excellent, the one fly in the ointment is that grass growth has been slow because its cold.

Growth rates are by no means disastrous, but are definitely a bit behind normal. Added to the fact that most farmers had a lower opening farm cover than target means that grass is scarce enough on farms.

For farmers that have 65% to 70% of the farm grazed, the next few weeks will be edge of the seat stuff as they will need to carefully ration out whatever area is yet to be grazed until there is enough grass back in the first grazed paddocks.

The target is to keep grass in the diet day and night and to have an average farm cover of no lower than 500kg to 550kg DM/ha by magic day, when growth equals demand.

Many farmers will start the second rotation before magic day and that’s fine, once there is enough grass on the farm to sustain the second round of 20 days or so.

The big unknown is what growth will be over the coming weeks. Milder weather next weekend should give grass a boost.

Responsive

The key thing is to be responsive to the changes in growth and that may mean slowing down or speeding up.

Slowing down will mean doing things like introducing silage into the diet or additional meal while speeding up will involve taking silage out of the diet and reducing meal feeding rates.

Best policy is to keep measuring grass weekly and compare actual farm cover to the grass budget, constantly watching that average farm cover doesn’t drop below 500kg to 550kg in early April.