Is it too early in year to clean off land?

Western Pomise

Hi all,
Just have a quick question regarding grazing ground for sheep. I have a couple of 3 acres fields around the house that I keep ewes in for lambing in March/early April.
Every Spring I would put 1 bag 18:6:12 on to the acre when I take the ewes off them. They would be well eaten down at that stage.
Graze them throughout the Summer and then in September I put another bag and a half of 18:6:12 on these fields per acre and close them up to build up a good cover of grass for ewes to go out to with new born lambs in March.
Then repeat process....
Clipped some hoggetts two weeks ago and put them and some ewes and lambs into these fields to eat off the 'yellow butt' of grass that remained from when the ewes and baby lambs were there in Spring.
Fields would be well eaten clean now by the sheep with medium strength rushes on about a third of each field iykwim.
Negative thing about these fields is that they are heavy so even though the are very dry now....they can get wet with any decent amount of rainfall over a few weeks.
My question is should I clean them off now with the Disc Mower?.....or wait another month to graze the regrowth again (which will probably be very strong as lots of sheep dung there now to help it grow) and then clean it off when its more likely the grass plants will have 'headed out' iykwim.
The danger of waiting another month to clean it off is that the fields may not be tractor trafficable if the weather broke badly in June.

Sorry for length of post....and thanks for any replies.

Dunedin

Western Pomise wrote: »

Hi all,
Just have a quick question regarding grazing ground for sheep. I have a couple of 3 acres fields around the house that I keep ewes in for lambing in March/early April.
Every Spring I would put 1 bag 18:6:12 on to the acre when I take the ewes off them. They would be well eaten down at that stage.
Graze them throughout the Summer and then in September I put another bag and a half of 18:6:12 on these fields per acre and close them up to build up a good cover of grass for ewes to go out to with new born lambs in March.
Then repeat process....
Clipped some hoggetts two weeks ago and put them and some ewes and lambs into these fields to eat off the 'yellow butt' of grass that remained from when the ewes and baby lambs were there in Spring.
Fields would be well eaten clean now by the sheep with medium strength rushes on about a third of each field iykwim.
Negative thing about these fields is that they are heavy so even though the are very dry now....they can get wet with any decent amount of rainfall over a few weeks.
My question is should I clean them off now with the Disc Mower?.....or wait another month to graze the regrowth again (which will probably be very strong as lots of sheep dung there now to help it grow) and then clean it off when its more likely the grass plants will have 'headed out' iykwim.
The danger of waiting another month to clean it off is that the fields may not be tractor trafficable if the weather broke badly in June.

Sorry for length of post....and thanks for any replies.

I wouldn’t have thought you’d have to do anything further after the sheep as they’ll graze it as tight as you’ll need it.

Anto_Meath

Could you take advantage of this dry weather and spray the rushes, then let the sheep back to the fields in about 3 weeks to eat the grass before topping? If you could get the rushes out of by spraying them the fields would actually dry up a bit.

Bleating Lamb

Dunedin wrote: »

I wouldn’t have thought you’d have to do anything further after the sheep as they’ll graze it as tight as you’ll need it.

I have a similar set up,I build up grass in the backend and use rushy wettish paddocks close to the yard to lamb the ewes out as they are safe.With the dry Spring it never stopped growing (boggy ground) so have ewes back in it now eating it down well.Was thinking now could be best time to top it off.

While the ewes and lambs have it fairly well grazed down there is still a bit of a dirty butt as if you can picture it the grass was almost 3/4 of a foot long but quite green on top when I let ewes with baby lambs into it in March/April.
Some people would say that length of grass is far too long for sheep but I find it drives on milk in newly lambed ewes and lasts a nice while reducing need for much nuts to be fed to milking ewes.

Bleating Lamb

Anto_Meath wrote: »

Could you take advantage of this dry weather and spray the rushes, then let the sheep back to the fields in about 3 weeks to eat the grass before topping? If you could get the rushes out of by spraying them the fields would actually dry up a bit.

Rushes were sprayed last year so they are not that strong and I was thinking if I was to clean off the ground now I could get the new sprouting rush regrowth licked in say mid August and that would help kill out the remaining ones in the fields.

I suppose crux of my query is......are you better letting grass grow till mid-Summer and clean it off then when grass is heading out,going to seed and quality is deteriorating?
Or
If I cleaned the ground off now (when fields are dead dry) would I increase the chances of having better quality grass for the rest of the Summer?......skipping out the heading out grass phase iykwim.

Bass Reeves

I clean it off now. You may get another chance to clean it off later in the year as well. The more you cut rushes the weaker they get. Spraying is often only a short term answer. I see rushes in places where there was no rushes30+ years ago. People often cut rushes by hand and used them as bedding for the winter before letting them rot down for 12+ months before using as manure Or they were often just let there.

wrangler

Bleating Lamb wrote: »

Rushes were sprayed last year so they are not that strong and I was thinking if I was to clean off the ground now I could get the new sprouting rush regrowth licked in say mid August and that would help kill out the remaining ones in the fields.

I suppose crux of my query is......are you better letting grass grow till mid-Summer and clean it off then when grass is heading out,going to seed and quality is deteriorating?
Or
If I cleaned the ground off now (when fields are dead dry) would I increase the chances of having better quality grass for the rest of the Summer?......skipping out the heading out grass phase iykwim.

You should clean it off now, anything that isn't eaten at this stage will sour and even restricts growth in those areas.
Avoiding a dirty 'butt' this time of year is vital to maintain grass quality for the rest of the year.

Bleating Lamb

That was my thinking on the thing as well tbh....just wanted to get some shared thoughts on it.Is the kind of ground that looks good with a growth of grass on it in June....but some wet Winters (like last Winter) you wouldn’t walk a pigeon across it without them marking it!.....the joys of farming in the West.....there was a reason Cromwell said ‘ to hell or to Connacht’:)

Western Pomise

Bass Reeves wrote: »

I clean it off now. You may get another chance to clean it off later in the year as well. The more you cut rushes the weaker they get. Spraying is often only a short term answer. I see rushes in places where there was no rushes30+ years ago. People often cut rushes by hand and used them as bedding for the winter before letting them rot down for 12+ months before using as manure Or they were often just let there.

Thanks all for replies....I'm not fierce fond of spraying rushes as I find that in wet land you might kill the bunch of rushes or half kill them but the area where the rush was never really recovers properly and nearly gets muckier after rain iykwim.

Thanks all for advice....Mower on tractor and going attacking them today;)