Grazing 2021

Heavy rain forced two paddocks closed here for the year that would love to have grazed again, heavy damp ground.

have about two weeks grazing if ground conditions don’t go too bad.

80% housed here. I’ve a batch of replacements still out and they’ll be left out until Christmas a few light weanlings and a batch of finishing cows that have access to a yard for feeding. It’s comfort more so than wandering around ditches looking for off form animals in the dark. I’ve never had as much grass at this time of year . I’ve 9 acres at the back of one of the sheds kept to creep calves out to in early spring.

3rd and 4th photos are the next field I am going to graze next,1st 2nd and last photo is the field they are currently grazing,this field was similar to the one that they are going in to next, they are in this field a week now

You have great grass yourself, are you happy with how they are grazing it? All I am worried about is that quality isn’t reduced in the spring if I don’t graze it tight,I uploaded photos there now

Still too mild to be housing cattle. The second half of the week is promised dry and by next weekend temperatures are back on the rise to the early teens.

Fields I mob grazed a month ago have a new cover of grass on the again with all the growth

Pretty much all gone in today bar the weanlings. Grass mostly gone and ground conditions gone to pot.

Ye are blessed with land like that!

I don't like leaving a cover of grass on fields I'll be closing for silage. I find the frost over the winter makes for a lot of rotten tips and grass through the silage. If you get a hard frost then it goes pure brown and needs to be grazed off before closing for silage.

I think all this regrowth is down to the monsoon like weather we are having now, wet and mild. The wetter and milder it gets the more the grass grows. The other side of it is the feed value, I've put mag buckets out now, some of the calves are still a bit away from weaning but seem to be sucking a lot more in this weathere. I think some of the grass is nothing more than green water so I'm afraid of tetany or grass staggers

It dose not. The grass changes from being 10-12%DM with water on it to being 25%+DM. It loses its soft green look but the feeding value increases.

Brown tips are 70%+DM, I never have a problem getting cattle to graze down such covers.

Cracking weather this morning. Hard to believe it's the first week of November, temperatures in the low teens still. I moved cattle back into silage ground that was mob grazed over a month ago. Unreal growth in 4 weeks that I couldn't leave like that for the winter.

I know what you are saying, my system I tend to calve all the cows from the 1st of March onwards so they'll be in sheds for the month of March regardless of the weather, and they'll be in a month before calving too. The system works for me as I can start letting cows and calf out 10 days after calving.

I have a share of dry land but also some higher up land which I have cattle still out on.

I had issues before with ground conditions in the past and it was down to being overstocked.

Sheep are on land here that was grazed six weeks ago. it has lay down and rotting from the bottom, It'd be some mess if left another two mths, previous paddock has recovered well already and will be grazed again

Sheep are a great job for cleaning the ground over the winter. Unfortunately it's not an option for me as there are too many household dogs in the area

Looking at the long range forecast it looks like high pressure for the next week so not much rain. Also there's a chance that the high pressure might form a blocking high to the NE of Ireland next week. If that happens we could get up to another 3 weeks of dry settled weather!!

Should sheep winter grazing on a cattle farm be treated differently in terms of parasites than if they stayed at home?

Would it be less worse than them grazing on a different farm that had sheep grazing on it?

Fantastic ground conditions still, but running outa grass very quickly here, despite renting some grazing for all the incalf heifers and afew cows, the SR is still 3lu/ha on the milking block, which would be a demand of 48, not a hope growth anywhere near that, so I may just ration out the 20ac left and try not go back on paddocks I've closed up for feb lol. Good complaint to have.