Soil moisture deficits of up to 80mm are having an impact on grass growth rates across much of the country.
The most severely impacted areas are in the south, east and midland regions, particularly in areas that missed the heavy downpours in early August.
While not technically in a drought, for many farmers this current dry spell is going to have far worse consequences than the drought in 2018.
The reason for this is timing. The 2018 drought hit hardest in July but heavy and widespread rain in August alleviated the soil moisture deficits on almost all farms. This resulted in excellent grass growing conditions by late August and early September, which continued right up to the end of November. Many farms were growing in excess of 70kg/day by late September.
While there is rain forecast for this weekend, it’s very hard to see how such high grass growth rates can be replicated this autumn, or even close to that.
For one thing, it takes at least two, if not three weeks for brown or yellow drought scorched fields to recover after getting rain. The pattern of rain also has an impact. While many farms got heavy rain in early August, a lot of this rain came in heavy thunderstorms and it’s likely that much of it ran off the surface rather than infiltrating the soil.
Forecast
There is heavy rain forecast for this weekend.
If this materialises and the weather patterns change, the best-case scenario then is for grass growth rates to start increasing by the third week of September and start to peak two weeks later in early October.
With much shorter daylight hours in October, it is very hard to see how grass growth rates can be any higher than 40kg to 50kg/ha/day at that stage before tailing off to more normal levels for October. Even with a 25% increase compared to normal growth rates for late October, I would be very pessimistic about achieving anything more than 25kg to 30kg/ha/day in late October.
Another reason to be pessimistic has got to do with average farm cover. We know that grass grows grass and so when grass is scarce, growth will be slow.
In 2018, it wasn’t until average farm covers reached 600kg to 700kg per hectare that growth rates really began to take off. On the worst-affected farms today, average farm cover is as low as 200kg to 300kg/ha.
How to manage your farm this autumn
Given where many farmers are at in terms of average farm cover, silage stocks and current feeding rates of both meal and silage, not getting a big bounce in growth this back-end is going to have serious repercussions.
Spiralling feed costs is one thing, but a carry-over effect into next season is also possible unless the grass situation is managed very carefully.
The following are some non-negotiables when it comes to managing farms this autumn:
1 Don’t let an autumn grass problem cause a spring grass problem. Autumn grassland management is all about setting the farm up for spring. For most farmers, this means having enough grass on the farm on 1 February to allow for early spring grazing and to have enough grass to stretch the first round of grazing to early April. Work back from this to identify how much grass you need by 1 December. For most farmers, an average farm cover (AFC) of 700kg to 900kg by 1 December is a good target. No matter what other grass target is missed this autumn, the closing cover target must be met.
2 Don’t use up winter feed in autumn. Identify how much silage you need for the winter and do not feed this to milking cows before then. Everyone should be measuring silage pits and counting bales and working out how much silage they need to feed all stock over the winter. What is not needed for the winter can be fed to supplement grass now. If there is not enough silage for the winter, you need to act now to either buy in extra feed for the winter or offload stock. 3 Do a feed plan for this autumn. Remember, the grass goal this autumn is to achieve the target closing cover and to feed as much grass as possible. The best way to achieve this is to try and get the average farm cover up as quickly as possible after it rains and growth increases. This means heavy feeding for two weeks or more when the amount of grass in the diet is very small. Based on expected grass growth rates, calculate how much meal and silage is required for this period and beyond.
The main feed options are silage, meal and straights such as palm kernel.
The most amount of meal and palm kernel that can be fed is 10kg per cow per day. The rest of the diet should be made up of forage such as grass or silage.
4 Don’t feed passengers. It makes no sense to be pumping feed into cows that won’t be on the farm long term. Cows should be pregnancy tested as soon as possible and where there are grass deficits, empty cows should be offloaded as soon as possible. This will free up more grass and silage for other stock on the farm and reduce the amount of purchased feed required. Do an early cull on other cows too, such as high SCC, poor performers, late calvers, lame, and so on.
5 Work out the costs. On many farms the costs will be enormous over the next three months, on top of the high feed costs of the last six weeks or more. As outlined in Table 1, feeding two of the three feeds mentioned at 6kg per cow per day each over the next three months will cost between €300 and €400 per cow or between €30,000 and €40,000 for a 100-cow herd. In terms of the economics of keeping cull cows; if for example one third of the diet is meal, it means that if the herd was reduced by one third, the need for the meal would disappear without affecting the use of other feeds. Therefore, all the meal costs could be apportioned to one third of the herd, or in this example the cull cows.
If meal is costing 46c/kg DM, 18kg of meal per day is costing €8.28 per cull cow per day or €910 over the next four months. Presume that the cows produce 1,560l of milk between now and the end of December worth 64c/l. That’s a milk income of €1,000 leaving a margin of €90.
However, the value of cull cows between now and Christmas is likely to fall by at least double that much. Even if it’s a zero sum game, reducing the stocking rate will reduce risk and make it easier to build covers when the growth does come.
Soil moisture deficits of up to 80mm are having an impact on grass growth rates across much of the country.
The most severely impacted areas are in the south, east and midland regions, particularly in areas that missed the heavy downpours in early August.
While not technically in a drought, for many farmers this current dry spell is going to have far worse consequences than the drought in 2018.
The reason for this is timing. The 2018 drought hit hardest in July but heavy and widespread rain in August alleviated the soil moisture deficits on almost all farms. This resulted in excellent grass growing conditions by late August and early September, which continued right up to the end of November. Many farms were growing in excess of 70kg/day by late September.
While there is rain forecast for this weekend, it’s very hard to see how such high grass growth rates can be replicated this autumn, or even close to that.
For one thing, it takes at least two, if not three weeks for brown or yellow drought scorched fields to recover after getting rain. The pattern of rain also has an impact. While many farms got heavy rain in early August, a lot of this rain came in heavy thunderstorms and it’s likely that much of it ran off the surface rather than infiltrating the soil.
Forecast
There is heavy rain forecast for this weekend.
If this materialises and the weather patterns change, the best-case scenario then is for grass growth rates to start increasing by the third week of September and start to peak two weeks later in early October.
With much shorter daylight hours in October, it is very hard to see how grass growth rates can be any higher than 40kg to 50kg/ha/day at that stage before tailing off to more normal levels for October. Even with a 25% increase compared to normal growth rates for late October, I would be very pessimistic about achieving anything more than 25kg to 30kg/ha/day in late October.
Another reason to be pessimistic has got to do with average farm cover. We know that grass grows grass and so when grass is scarce, growth will be slow.
In 2018, it wasn’t until average farm covers reached 600kg to 700kg per hectare that growth rates really began to take off. On the worst-affected farms today, average farm cover is as low as 200kg to 300kg/ha.
How to manage your farm this autumn
Given where many farmers are at in terms of average farm cover, silage stocks and current feeding rates of both meal and silage, not getting a big bounce in growth this back-end is going to have serious repercussions.
Spiralling feed costs is one thing, but a carry-over effect into next season is also possible unless the grass situation is managed very carefully.
The following are some non-negotiables when it comes to managing farms this autumn:
1 Don’t let an autumn grass problem cause a spring grass problem. Autumn grassland management is all about setting the farm up for spring. For most farmers, this means having enough grass on the farm on 1 February to allow for early spring grazing and to have enough grass to stretch the first round of grazing to early April. Work back from this to identify how much grass you need by 1 December. For most farmers, an average farm cover (AFC) of 700kg to 900kg by 1 December is a good target. No matter what other grass target is missed this autumn, the closing cover target must be met.
2 Don’t use up winter feed in autumn. Identify how much silage you need for the winter and do not feed this to milking cows before then. Everyone should be measuring silage pits and counting bales and working out how much silage they need to feed all stock over the winter. What is not needed for the winter can be fed to supplement grass now. If there is not enough silage for the winter, you need to act now to either buy in extra feed for the winter or offload stock. 3 Do a feed plan for this autumn. Remember, the grass goal this autumn is to achieve the target closing cover and to feed as much grass as possible. The best way to achieve this is to try and get the average farm cover up as quickly as possible after it rains and growth increases. This means heavy feeding for two weeks or more when the amount of grass in the diet is very small. Based on expected grass growth rates, calculate how much meal and silage is required for this period and beyond.
The main feed options are silage, meal and straights such as palm kernel.
The most amount of meal and palm kernel that can be fed is 10kg per cow per day. The rest of the diet should be made up of forage such as grass or silage.
4 Don’t feed passengers. It makes no sense to be pumping feed into cows that won’t be on the farm long term. Cows should be pregnancy tested as soon as possible and where there are grass deficits, empty cows should be offloaded as soon as possible. This will free up more grass and silage for other stock on the farm and reduce the amount of purchased feed required. Do an early cull on other cows too, such as high SCC, poor performers, late calvers, lame, and so on.
5 Work out the costs. On many farms the costs will be enormous over the next three months, on top of the high feed costs of the last six weeks or more. As outlined in Table 1, feeding two of the three feeds mentioned at 6kg per cow per day each over the next three months will cost between €300 and €400 per cow or between €30,000 and €40,000 for a 100-cow herd. In terms of the economics of keeping cull cows; if for example one third of the diet is meal, it means that if the herd was reduced by one third, the need for the meal would disappear without affecting the use of other feeds. Therefore, all the meal costs could be apportioned to one third of the herd, or in this example the cull cows.
If meal is costing 46c/kg DM, 18kg of meal per day is costing €8.28 per cull cow per day or €910 over the next four months. Presume that the cows produce 1,560l of milk between now and the end of December worth 64c/l. That’s a milk income of €1,000 leaving a margin of €90.
However, the value of cull cows between now and Christmas is likely to fall by at least double that much. Even if it’s a zero sum game, reducing the stocking rate will reduce risk and make it easier to build covers when the growth does come.
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