Getting grazed grass into the dairy cow diet through challenging weather conditions

Micheál O’Leary and Fergus Bogue join Emma-Louise Coffey to advise on managing grazing during challenging weather conditions. Firstly, Micheál quantifies the over-winter growth and the opening farm cover from PastureBase Ireland records. Micheál explains that over-winter growth was approximately 4-5 kg DM/day but varied widely; where farms were closed high in the autumn, higher growth rates were achieved at up to 7-8 kg DM/day. Micheál recommends that farmers must target an opening farm cover of 900 kg DM/ha to support a milking platform stocking rate of 3 cows/ha and a tight calving pattern.  Importantly, many farmers are not at the target farm cover so Micheál asks the question, have you gotten the fertiliser out? If not, it is important to do so to kick-start grass production. Fergus describes the grazing season to date, explaining that the spring rotation got off to a good start with many farmers out grazing from early February until the storm and snow hit farms in the last week. He encourages farmers to use all of the tools and technologies available to get cows out, even if only for 2-3 hours after milking. Fergus also recommends that farmers should target dry paddocks with a cover of 700-1,000 kg DM/ha and use the strip wire to back fence ground that has already been grazed. For more episodes and information from the Dairy Edge podcast go to: https://www.teagasc.ie/animals/dairy/the-dairy-edge-podcast/