While multispecies swards are the buzzwords now, that wasn’t always the case.

Even as recently as 2017, multispecies was very much a niche choice when it came to reseeding.

However, that was the first year that Meath farmer Joe Leonard planted multispecies swards.

His inspiration – a discussion group visit to South Africa in 2016, where half the farms they visited were growing multispecies and raving about its success.

Despite Joe’s first experience with multispecies not being successful, he has stuck at it and now over 34% of the milking platform is in multispecies swards. The lack of success from the 2017 reseed was demonstrated by the fact that after two years there was little else but grass remaining, Joe says. His reasons for this were:

  • It was planted in land that was previously in maize and tillage.
  • It was sown in August, which he says is too late.
  • It was a very wet autumn in 2017, and spring 2018 was very cold and wet with snow for a week, followed by a drought in summer.
  • He says he lost his nerve and spread chemical nitrogen on it.
  • No reseeding was carried out in 2018 due to the drought, so when it came to choosing what varieties to use when reseeding just shy of 10% of the farm in 2019, Joe stuck with multispecies and has only been using multispecies when reseeding since. For Joe, improved soil health is one of the main benefits of multispecies.

    “Plants such as chicory, red clover and cocksfoot are all deeper-rooting than perennial ryegrass. As such, they are able to infiltrate deeper into the soil depositing organic matter in the form of dead roots deeper into the ground.

    “Their roots also open up the soil to allow greater water infiltration and are able to utilise minerals from a greater depth in the soil horizon. They are also a little more drought-resistant, as their roots are able to reach further into drying soils,” he says.

    Joe Leonard will outline how multispecies has been working on his Meath dairy farm.

    While he says that the above benefits are hard to quantify, there is no denying the financial benefit that has come from spreading less chemical nitrogen.

    The multispecies swards typically get one bag/acre of urea between February and March and two bags/acre of 18:6:12, with no more chemical fertiliser for the year.

    This is a huge saving on nitrogen compared to a typical grass-only sward on the farm, which would be getting over 250kg N/ha.

    Pasture growth

    In terms of pasture growth, Joe says the multispecies swards on the farm are performing favourably to the non-multispecies paddocks.

    Leaving out paddocks that were reseeded with multispecies that year, average pasture growth in the multispecies swards in 2020 was 13.3t DM/ha compared to 12.7t DM/ha for the rest of the farm.

    In 2021, the multispecies paddocks grew 13.2t DM/ha, while the rest of the farm grew 14t DM/ha and up to 1 November this year the multispecies paddocks grew 11.1t DM/ha compared to 11.5t DM/ha for the other paddocks.

    The savings on nitrogen account for €478/ha, so Joe says even with a slight reduction in yield the economics still stack up in favour of multispecies on his farm, which he points out is dry and free-draining and prone to droughts.

    “We typically allow the multispecies an extra four to five days growth when on a standard 21-day rotation length as the chicory and plantain, in particular, require a longer recovery time between grazing.

    “This means our pre-grazing yields are usually between 1,900kg and 2,200kgDM/ha rather than a 1,400kg to 1,600kg DM/ha cover we’d like in a perennial ryegrass sward.

    “We also aim to leave closer to 200kg DM/ha as a residual cover, so as not to over-graze the chicory because it is less persistent in the sward than other species. Even so, the chicory usually only lasts for the first couple of seasons but, at this stage, we hope that its large tap root has already delivered soil structure benefits,” he says.

    Streamlining the business

    How to reduce workload, while at the same time make dairy farms more profitable and more enjoyable places to work, is an objective for most farmers.

    So how do those who run multiple dairy farms do it and what principles can everyone else learn from them?

    Matthew Jackson from Wales and Blair Robinson from New Zealand will speak at the conference on this subject.

    Thirty-four year old Matthew is from a non-farming background having grown up in Manchester but is now running multiple dairy farms in Wales in equity partnerships and has also invested in other businesses.

    Matthew Jackson speaking at a previous positive farmers conference.

    Matthew will outline how he evaluates an opportunity, the non-negotiables when running a dairy farm and how to make equity partnerships work, while managing a work-life balance with a young family.

    Meanwhile, Blair Robinson from New Zealand is travelling to Cork to speak at the conference. Blair is the chief operations officer with Dairy Holdings Ltd, a very large corporate farming company in New Zealand.

    Blair will share his experiences of operating multiple units and how Dairy Holdings are transitioning to the new landscape of stricter environmental regulations, severe input price inflation and a big scarcity of skilled labour in New Zealand – issues all too familiar to the Irish audience.

    Cultivating farming relationships

    Marion Beecher from Teagasc Moorepark will present a paper on some of the findings from a recent survey on the role of female partners on dairy farms.

    Twenty-one women from various backgrounds were comprehensively surveyed as part of the research project.“In the early days of courtship, participants were more focused on their own education and careers, which were distinct and separate from their partner’s on-farm job – they saw the farm as ‘his job’.

    “As courtships progressed, the women learned that the farm was more than a job and the influence of partners’ families became more apparent. For most, there was a realisation that marrying into a farming family was complex and that the farm and the family would be intertwined with spoken and unspoken expectations.

    “Participants’ experiences with their partners’ families ranged from those that embodied good communication and solid partnerships to the opposite of poor communication and unspoken expectations leading to often strained relationships at times,” Marion says.

    She goes on to say that the challenges of childcare and juggling their on-farm roles with their off-farm careers and then caring for elderly parents can become extremely challenging and often isolating for female partners.

    These issues and ways to avoid them will be discussed by Marion and dairy farmers Claire and Andrew Brewer.

    Attend the conference

    The positive farmers conference takes place on 11 and 12 January 2023 at the Radisson Blu Hotel, Little Island, Cork. Full programme and tickets are available at www.positivefarmers.ie.