Archive Article: 2000/03/03
Mark Osman
Mark Osman is herd
manager for the 300ha(750-
acre) Berks farm owned by
Zeneca. It is two-thirds
owned, and 154ha (380
acres) is cropped with
117ha (290 acres) of grass
and 2.8ha (7 acres) of
maize. Stocking is 150
Friesian Holstein cows,
80 replacements and
300 ewe lambs
I APPROACHED Valentines Day full of hope and optimism that it would be a glorious day with 150 large ladies wanting to chase me up the farm road in my wellies.
My hopes were dashed. This is not due to losing my charm and good looks; my wife has said on many occasions that I lost them just after we got married. It is because we have had to delay turnout.
Peter, the herdsman, has been measuring grass each week since Christmas with the plate meter. After ending November with 2050kg DM/ha average cover, we seem to have emerged with only 1950kg in January.
I think this might be for two reasons: First, that the plate meter needs some maintenance as it has probably seized up over winter or the second, more likely, reason, that grass has succumbed to rust on four of the paddocks.
It is not the 300 ewe lambs that we had out until the last week in January, as these have only been grazing permanent pasture and some Italian tetraploids away from the main cow paddocks.
The Italian tetraploids were only going to act as a winter cover crop and provide early grazing before maize-drilling in April. But now we have decided to keep this 8ha (20-acre) block for first cut silage and then graze it until autumn when it will return to cereals.
In the past we have found that when cows graze tetraploids during February and March, subsequent grass production and quality is lower than grazing tightly with sheep in late January.
This is mainly due to the level of poaching by cows in adverse weather, in fields with no multiple access points. The cost of putting tracks in fields which are only going to be used once or twice every few years is not justified.
Cows will now go out during the third week of February. Restricting intakes to 6-7kg DM a cow a day for the first three weeks until grass growth starts to pick up, should mean we save 22t of silage dry matter at an approximate cost of £45/t. This amounts to a total saving of nearly £1000. *
Grass rust problems delayed turnout meaning being chased up the road by 150 large ladies on Valentines Day was only a
dream for Mark Osman.