The heavy rainfall that sporadically hit some parts of the country over the last week or so has softened ground that little bit. Truth be told, the cold, dry spell did not naturally dry the ground out, but rather dried off the surface and left the soil underneath still sticky. When rain hit, this top layer was quick to get wet.

Saying that, it’s not akin to a wet February or October, and by and large a lot of farmers are still grazing full time, albeit with a bit more wastage. It’s a careful balance at the minute with spring calving suckler and dairy stock, and ewes with lambs at foot to balance intakes with clean outs. Some farmers have found that with the wetter weather, stock are dirtying grass and leaving it behind them. Locking stock in to a paddock to try clean this out will likely just result in intake levels being hit, and each of the three groups of stock above need to be hitting peak intake at the minute. If stock fail to graze out a paddock, move them on and earmark the paddock for a tight grazing at a lower cover in the next round.

Fertiliser

Many farmers will have a round, if not two, of straight N spread at this stage. To maintain or build indexes, compounds will be needed for the next round or two where there is not ample slurry on farm, or it is of poorer quality. Spreading 1.5 bags/acre of 18-6-12 should maintain indexes in paddocks that are not cut for silage, as 90% of P and K will be returned back in to the ground from dunging, and where indexes are low and you wish to build them, another round of compounds would be wise.