Grass growth

At this stage all parts of the country are certain to get rain over the weekend. Thundery showers earlier in the week were very localised, but brought good relief to the places that got them.

It looks like the rain is just coming at the right time as soil moisture deficits were beginning to affect grass growth rates and quality was beginning to suffer as the grass plant started to stress.

Grass is now changing from the vegetative stage to the reproductive stage where it wants to go to seed. This brings more stem into the sward and quality drops. A period of stress, such as lack of moisture or lack of nitrogen will accelerate this.

Depending on how much rain we get over the coming days, we can assume relatively good growth rates for the next few weeks of at least 60kg to 70kg/ha/day on well-fertilised farms.

The priority must be in ensuring quality as we head into June and July. These months have the potential to be good months for milk production, but on many farms milk yield drops too quickly in June because grass quality is poor.

When walking paddocks, you want to look at three things; grass yield, grass quality and clover content. Surplus paddocks should be decided based on both yield and quality, while high clover paddocks can go on half-rate nitrogen from now on.

Breeding

At this stage most farmers will have passed the three weeks mark of breeding. Any cow not yet served and calved more than 30 days should be scanned to see what the issue is. The vet can prescribe the list of actions based on the result.

For some cows they will need more time, for others they will need a progesterone programme such as CIDR or PRID while others will need prostaglandin.

These are all problem cows, and leaving them to their own devices will likely increase their chances of being empty at the end of the season. It’s also getting late for sexed semen, as it has a lower conception rate than conventional semen.

There is still time to use a few more weeks of conventional dairy AI because a cow served this week is going to calve in early March. Most will use St Patrick’s Day as the cut-off for dairy heifer calves.

If using beef AI, make sure to use a team of beef bulls to avoid any potential problems with just one AI bull.

Silage

Many farmers took the opportunity to get silage cut over the last week or 10 days, which is typically a week or 10 days earlier than normal so quality should be good and quantity wasn’t bad either.

If slurry or 0:7:30 was applied to the silage ground when it was closed, then it shouldn’t need more slurry now. The exception to that is if it is being closed for second-cut or if the soil fertility is low.

Fields closed for second-cut will need about 2,000 gallons/acre of slurry, which is the equivalent of two bags/acre of 0:7:30. How much nitrogen to spread for second-cut depends on what allowance is available.

The old recommendation was 80 units/acre, but where allowance is tight and where slurry has been spread then this can be reduced to 60 units/acre.