9am soil temperatures have increased by on average one degree from the previous week, ranging from 16 to 17 degrees celsius. Coupled with the obvious reduction in rainfall and higher daytime temperatures, growth rates across the country have improved considerably and regularly between 55 and 75 kgDM/ha/day for the past week. There is an obvious improvement in the growing state with the lush green colour evident in most farms as residual nitrogen in the soil now being taken up by the growing plant. This response is slightly later on wetter farms but I would expect to see improvements on these farms in the coming week.
Hopefully this increase in growth has put the farm back on target for your Autumn budget and you should now be building cover again. For many highly stocked farms the Autumn balance date (when demand will exceed growth) is only a month away and to build to a balance day farm cover circa 1150 – 1200 kgDM/ha will require continued high growth above demand. As mentioned before, demand is fully in your control and there are many options in this regard.
• Reduce grass allowance/intake on the milking platform
o Introduce concentrates or high quality bale silage into the diet.
o Zero grazing grass from outside ground.
• Reduce stock numbers on the milking platform
o Dry off problem cows – SCC, low yielders etc.
o Remove other stock (beef cattle, calves and/or in-calf heifers) to outside ground if available.
Low stocking rate farms have a little more time, simply in that their balance date will be later in September or early October. However the necessity to build to peak cover at this date is none less than highly stocked farms and similar options apply.
Coincidently, the short term effect of reducing demand by feeding concentrates seems to differ on farms. Those with high sward quality are seeing little response from the concentrate feeding while those grazing poor quality swards are responding to the concentrate with increased output. Either way don’t forget the long term effect – building cover to balance date leading to extra days grazing on grass later in the year.
Some farms are ahead of target regarding building cover and extending rotation. With high growth suggested again for the coming week, paddocks can be skipped and baled. However, I suggested that these paddocks are cut as soon as possible once the decision is made. Daylight length is shortening, and at this time of year a decline in weather conditions can be rapid, leading to a drop in growth. Therefore get these paddocks back in the grazing platform quickly.
Target a rotation length circa 28 days by the end of August. Therefore, you should now be on a 24-25 day rotation and increasing weekly until then. If you are allowing second cut aftergrass to build through August then you should be keeping rotation length at 21-22 day rotation with the aftergrass giving 6-7 extra days grazing late in August yielding 28 days at this time.
We are now entering a critical period in the grazing season. Fundamental to all above is walking the farm, measuring cover and budgeting – failure to plan is planning for failure and will cost you money.
We are please to announce the appointment of a new recruit to the Grazing Musketeer service. Brian Costello from Boyle, Co. Roscommon takes over responsibility for the counties in the North West and North East regions and will be available for consultancy from early September onwards. If you wish to avail of the service contact me on 086 8360285.
