So the rain keeps coming and the outlook for the coming week is for further rainfall across the country. This is leading to some frustration for the many farmers with second cut silage yet to cut - and for many there is now some urgency to get this cut to allow the building of aftergrass in late August to extend the rotation. Every window of opportunity must be taken as delaying it too long will hinder your Autumn grazing management plan and could cost you more in the long run.
Growth rates in the past week are slightly back on the previous week ranging from 46 to 73 kgDM/ha/day. This is again due to the higher rainfall, lower sunshine levels and the slight reduction in the 9am soil temperatures to 15.9 - 17.1 degrees Celsius. The cumululative effects of these factors are differing on some farms. Clay/Loam and Peaty/Clay soils are now at saturation point and some are even waterlogged at this stage. This is having an obvious reduction in growth on these farms.
When setting up the grass wedge for the next week, you should be considering your last weeks growth and trying to predict growth for the next 10 days. Dry farms which grew >65 kgDM/ha/day should expect to grow similar the coming week and should stay on a 18-19 day rotation. However wet farms which grew less than this and with further rainfall prediction should plan for a 20-21 day rotation.
Another comment coming back from farms in the past week is that that "cows are not eating as much as we thought". This is possible as grazing conditions and dry matter levels are reduced and energy output is lower with reducing milk yield on farms. In response to this, for grass wedge and budgeting I have reduced the daily grass intake of cows on many farms by approximately 0.5 kgDM/ha/day.
With regular rainfall the grass dry matter is now staying low. When estimating dry matter when doing a farm walk - if the grass has surface water/moisture the dry matters are ranging between 13-15%, whereas if dry to touch then dry matters range from 15-17%.
Another observation in the past week has been an increase in the amount of dead material visible sitting on top of the just grazed sward. Don't worry about this - this is a natural occurrence as past of tiller death in swards. It is most prevalent in aftergrass swards -as part of the silage cutting process, when the seed head and growing point is removed then the remaining tiller shoot will die and is pulled up by the grazing cow - and this is now easier to do when the soils is wet. Much of this dead material is also weed grasses like meadow grass and creeping bent which haved an annual cycle and tiller death is now part of this cycle. Therefore it is important to keep swards grazed to a low post-grazing height 3.5-4.0cm to ensure that light is getting to the base of the sward allowing the developing tillers to grow and fill the spaces left by these dead tillers.
