The average growth around the country this week was 35kg/day and grass is disappearing fast on a lot of farms.

Check your autumn rotational planner to see if you’re on target with percentage grazed. Make sure that your start of closing date is early October as with current growth rate these fields are more than likely closed.

Most farmers will find themselves ahead of target. This indicates they can slow down in order to stretch out the grazing season. This can be done by increasing supplementation, for example silage or concentrates.

Another option would be to reduce demand by removing lower-priority stock, for example selling cull cows or housing low-producing animals.

Given that most farms will have 33% or more of the grazing platform closed now, fields grazed and closed this week will be in the mid third of your wedge in the spring. These paddocks will be at ideal covers for early grazing.

Grazing the middle third of your wedge first in the spring ensures you get more ground grazed with low stock numbers and help keep utilisation high when stock numbers on the ground may be low. So target grazing paddocks close to the yard with good access over the next week to leave plenty of options and opportunities to get stock out early.

Your average farm cover is the other area you need to keep an eye on. Everyone should set the target closing cover to have on 1 December.

This will vary depending on demand in early spring. For early turnout and high demand you will want 700kg/ha plus and for low demand and late turnout in spring 500-550kg/ha may be enough.