As we move into August, grass management changes and you need to look at building grass covers.

Stocking rate will have a big effect on when you should start building. The higher your stocking rate, the earlier you need to build. Location and land type are also two factors to consider when building grass as this will affect your housing and turn out dates in the autumn and spring respectively.

Farmers that will be stocked at 3.2LU/ha plus for the remainder of the year will want to look at building covers from now on.

This means having a cover/LU of 180-200kg this week and keeping growth ahead of demand until mid- to late September.

At that stage, when demand exceeds growth you should have an average farm cover (AFC) of 1,000kg/ha to 1,200kg/ha.

Highly stocked farms that can keep cows out in the autumn and can get cows out early in the spring need to be building to a AFC of 1,200kg/ha.

Starting early will give farmers the best chance of building covers without having to increase supplementation too much over the next month.

So for these farms, this week should see the last of any surplus bales being cut on the grazing platform.

Lower stocked farms (those stocked below 3.0LU/ha) don’t need to start building grass until after mid-August. Target maintaining the grass cover/LU at 180-200kg/ha.

Any farm stocked at 2.5LU/ha or less will be building grass into mid-October on the average year so take this into account when you are starting to plan building your grass covers.

Farmers with a high percentage of poor P and K soils may need to start building grass earlier than too as low P and K soils generally have poor grass growth in the shoulders of the year.

Caroline O’Sullivan

Teagasc Curtins Farm, Co Cork

Grass is in good supply at the moment. With a lot of reseeded ground, the challenge is keeping grass grazed so stocking rate is still high. We have blanket-spread the farm with 20 units of nitrogen (N) on the grass-only fields and 10 units of N on the grass clover and multispecies paddocks. This will leave one application of N for the rest of the year which we will target in the first week of September. It is a quiet time on the farm here so we are currently adding in a new laneway on the farm and taking the opportunity to upgrade the grazing infrastructure where possible.

Daniel Rundle

Ardee, Co Louth

We are currently waiting on a break in the weather here to cut two paddocks that have been taken off the wedge for surplus bales. This should be the last of the surplus to be removed this year as we hope to build grass from next week on. We are now looking at improving soil fertility on the farm with a load of lime going out this week at a rate of 2t/ac on fields with a low pH. We are also looking at targeting low P and K soils with two bags of 10.10.20 this month. Pre grazing yields on the farm are good at 1,350kg/ha leading to good utilisation.

GD Young

Dysart, Co Westmeath

Grass is growing well here. We skipped a couple of paddock that will be cut towards the end of the week once we get two dry days forecast. Pre-grazing yields are currently at 1,500kg/ha. We are stocked high so are starting to build grass already. It will be important to build a good bank of grass here as we target early turnout in the spring and have demand early on with a compact calving pattern. We are currently following the cows with protected urea and plan to spread muriate of potash at the end of August/early September. Second-cut will be taken once weather allows and will be reseeded afterwards.