8 ways to improve spring grass management

Dairy farmers should be targeting early spring turnout, with every additional day at pasture worth €2.70 (£2.34) profit a cow driven by lower feed costs and improved constituents.

Teagasc dairy specialist John Maher said getting cows out to grass early and improving grass use would increase the farm’s grass-growing capacity and generate more profit.

The National Farm Survey in 2015 showed farmers that used more grass a hectare were more profitable with every extra tonne of grass grown worth €185/ha (£213/ha).

See also: Cell grazing improves liveweight production from grass

However, he said many Irish farms were failing to reach grass-use targets set by the Teagasc spring-rotation planner.

According to the Pasture Base Ireland database in the spring of 2015 and 2016 on average most farms only reached 20% grazed by 1 March compared with the 30% target.

Mr Maher said: “Grazing stimulates spring grass production and increases the number of grazings achieved. The greater the grazings achieved, the higher level of pasture production achieved.

“The most fundamental way of lowering costs of production is to target a longer grazing season with higher grass utilisation.”

He advised farmers at the Positive Farmers conference last week to target 10 grazings a paddock and use 10t of grass a hectare.

To achieve this, he said 30% of the platform should be grazed by 1 March, a further 30% by mid-March and the first rotation should be completed by the first week of April.

If not farmers would risk delaying the start of the second rotation in early April and reducing the number of grazings completed in a season, he warned.