Profit from grass: Rain brings prospects of extra cut

WIDESPREAD rain has come as a welcome relief for most farmers in our ‘Profit from Grass’ project, in many cases providing the prospect of an extra cut of silage.

Grass growth rates have ranged from 52 to 72kg DM per hectare per day over the past fortnight, which is a marked improvement on the previous two weeks.

“Our Shropshire farm, for example, was achieving just 15kg DM per hectare per day in the recent dry spell but has increased this significantly to 64kg this week,” says Piers Badnell, extension officer with DairyCo.

“With temperatures generally remaining slightly below 20 degrees C, we have good grass growing conditions, so keeping on top of growth once again becomes an issue.

Opportunity

“This might present the opportunity over the next month or two to take more silage if needed, which will help make up the shortfall in first cut yields.”

But after the dry spell, it is important not to return to a sward too quickly, according to Mr Badnell, who says two leaves should be visible before grazing again if regrowth is not to be compromised.

“The grass will potentially all come back at the same time so you almost need to treat this regrowth like a silage aftermath,” he says. “If you waited until covers had reached the usual 2,600kg to 2,700kg DM per hectare, you’d find that by the time you reached the end of the grazing round, you’d have more than 3,000kg DM per hectare, which is more than you would want.

“So, go back in at around 2,100kg to 2,200kg and you can start recreating the grass wedge for which you should be aiming.”

Quality

Grass quality within the trial group remains high in this week’s analysis, with ME still averaging just over 12MJ per kg DM.

“This means there is plenty of opportunity to produce milk from grazing, although other enterprises on the farm should also be exploiting this forage quality,” he says.

Extension officer Chris Coxon says young heifers in particular should be using this growth and can potentially achieve the desired liveweight gain of around 0.75kg per

day from good quality grass alone.

“But if ME drops to 10 or below, achieving the required energy intake will be difficult so some rearer concentrate is likely to be needed to ensure they keep growing,” says Mr Coxon. “Rotational grazers are more likely to achieve the required energy intakes than those on set stocking where quality will be lower.”

He also recommends regular grass analysis, as stemmy growth can be very low energy and guessing grass quality can be ‘wide of the mark’.

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