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Reduce grazing time to get more from wet grass

Dairy Update 11 March 2013
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Learning to be flexible about what fields to graze and when is essential in a wet year, believes Keith Davis of Lydney Park Farms.

“Obviously we try to graze the fields at the top of the grass wedge first, but if conditions are too wet we may skip some parts and come back to them a couple of days later,” he says.

“If there’s a wet field, even if it’s not at the top of the wedge, if it’s dry enough and you know that there’s rain on the way in a few days’ time we’ve gone in early.”

One of the main practices established last year was to put the cows into the field with an edge on their appetite and to limit the amount of time they had to graze.

“We limited time to about three hours,” Mr Davis explains. “The moment they started to look around and put their heads up, we’d take them off. Most of the worst damage is done when the cows are moving about, so taking them off as soon as they had grazed enough helped to keep damage to a minimum.

“We had to do a lot more on/off grazing last year than we have in the past. It’s surprising what’s dry enough when you use these tactics and make sure you get in and get off on the really good, dry days.”

Mr Davis also put in as many entrances and exits to fields as possible, using electric fencing to help ensure cows weren’t using each exit more than once.

Managing grass after a wet season 

DairyCo R&D manager Debbie McConnell gives the following tips:

  • Walk your fields and assess paddocks to identify any areas of soil damage.
  • If fields were badly poached last autumn and the swards haven’t recovered during the winter, consider earmarking these fields for re-seeding. There may also be scope to oversow areas of bare soil badly poached – remember the success of this will depend on whether there are underlying compaction problems.
  • Graze wet fields or damaged areas in dry times, even if it means entering at slightly lower grass covers. Keep stocking rates low to minimise damage.
  • Consider closing off very wet fields for silage production to avoid further damage.
  • Backfencing previously grazed areas and maximising the use of multiple field entrances and exits will help reduce damage in marginal conditions.
  • When conditions aren’t that favourable for grazing, but you still want to get the cows out, try on/off grazing. Research from Ireland suggests good grass intakes can be achieved within two to three hours when cows are accustomed to this practice. Bring cows in as soon as grazing activity ceases to minimise soil damage.
  • Poaching can significantly reduce pasture regrowth, so if soils are wet, don’t risk damage to achieve optimum residuals. There will be other opportunities to correct poor residuals and this is easier to fix than damaged soils.

“If the cows were in the field for half a day we’d make sure they went in one way and left the field through a different exit. If they were in a full day we’d have four entrances and exits, which wasn’t too difficult using electric fences.”

Tracks are a vital part of keeping the cows out, says Mr Davis, with good tracks helping to make sure cows are grazed every day, even in a wet year like 2012. “We went out on 1 February and came in on 15 November. The cows were housed a couple of weeks earlier than we’d budgeted for, but this was due to the slow autumn grass growth rather than the wet fields.”

This year the cows were out on 2 February. “It is wet, but we’re doing more on/off three-hour grazing and at the moment cows are eating 6kg DM from grazing each day, with the rest in the shed. We aim to maximise milk from forage. We’re a relatively low-yielding herd – about 5,300 litres and about 3,800 litres of that from forage.

“We didn’t do badly on production last year. We had a tricky start while we were establishing the best way of working and grazing, so we did miss the peak production in April, but once we got the system established we were able to compensate through the latter part of the year, when production improved.”

Mr Davis uses the Recommended List of Grass and Clover to select varieties and selects long-term grazing leys.

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