While carrying out a farm walk today the farmer made the comment that early August is normally the time of year that his farm is in drought. While we both agreed that we certainly don't have to worry about that now or for this year, there is a quick realisation that the continued wet weather is causing its own problems. The farm in question has approximately 50ha of second cut silage yet to cut, and with a targeton this farm to increase farm cover to 950 kgDM/ha for the end of August - time is running short.

This scenario is being replicated accross the country with no window of oppertunity with the persistent wet weather. However, forecasts for the remainder of this week look more promising but more wet weather suggested again from Sunday. So, take the oppertunity get the silage saved this week and set the farm up well for lengthening of the rotation with the aftergrass in 3-4 weeks time.

Growth rates so far this week have generally seen a further reduction from the previous week - but again the extent of the drop appears to be the level of saturation in the soil. For example a farm average of 52 kgDM/ha and a range of 20 kgDM/ha to 110 kgDM/ha, with the "boggy" paddocks being the former and the "free draining" or "reseed" paddocks being the latter.

This drop in growth is forcing some to feed concentrate at varying levels due to an overal drop in farm cover and/or a weakness in the feed wedge. As I mentioned previously the economics of concentrate feeding is questionable and this supplementation should be short lived once grass supply increases. When preparaing the feed wedge until the next farm walk, you should by now be planning for a 20-21 day rotation.

It is again quiet noticable that residency period is also leading to poor re-growth in certain paddocks on-farm, especially in the heifer or calf paddocks. try to keep the residency in the paddock under 48 hours - if this can't be done then it is best to block graze the paddock shortening the residency in each section.