The wet weather of August has left many farmers behind target on their farms.

The first thing farmers should do is a grass budget on PastureBase, giving themselves an overview of the grass supply on-farm over the next few months.

This will give you a better indication of what you need to build your AFC to. For most, the target is an AFC of 1,100kg/ha by mid to late September. However, lowly-stocked farms with a stocking rate of less than 2.5LU/ha won’t have to peak this high.

If you are behind target and need to catch up, act fast and take advantage of the remaining good grass growth rates.

Reduce the demand on the farm over the next week. This can be done by upping supplementation. Increasing the meal in the parlour will help if you are only slightly off your target, but if you’re a nice bit behind, the introduction of silage or zero grazed grass from an out-block should be introduced.

If you are behind target and need to catch up, act fast and take advantage of the remaining good grass growth rates

Once silage goes in, stripe wires need to be use in the fields to reduce the grass allocation and ensure good utilisation.

When estimating the kg of silage being fed, a good rule of thumb is that a round bale of silage is 200kg of DM, so if you feed two bales to 100 cows, they will get 4kg of silage. This will help when allocating grass.

Ensure you hold your rotation length - we are now coming up to the middle of September and the rotation length needs to be getting close to 35 days.

For example, if you have a 105ac block and want to be on a 35 day rotation, you should be only grazing 3ac a day. If this doesn’t meet the daily requirement, supplements should make up the shortfall.

Removing excess stock will also help reduce demand. Cull cows and empty cows should be removed from any highly-stocked farms that are behind target.

Calves and heifers should also be removed from the milking block, where possible, to prioritise the producing animals.