Beef Grazing 2022

Not sure of area you're grazing but it's hard to imagine 30 weanlings being able to keep up with growth, Whats your AFC?

Feck it, I hate the East wind.

Great drying for the ground of Longford and up the country tho with it, especially now at slurry time

If land was grazed late in the autumn and got a good cleaning it’ll make no difference. Usually don’t get silage grazed here before closing for silage. If it’s cut early enough (20th May) you’ll still have great silage. 75 dmd +.

Cut stuff two years ago that wasn’t grazed in the spring. It came back at 77dmd. It was rocket fuel.

Also saw one spring that we grazed it took forever to start growing because it got cold. The ground with a bit of cover kept tipping away.

Had 78 DMD here last year with an identical lead in.

You're suggesting making poor quality silage as a result of the price of fert?

I graze the silage ground here at the back end and again in the spring. Graze it down to nothing with milkers. Then take first cut at end of May early June. Works for us

feck it I let some of the early calved cows and calves onto the silage ground. The weather is promised ok for the next 10 days. Calves are getting strong but getting dirty on the slats plus the silage I was feeding them was poor quality. I made it in dry weather but the problem was it was gone into a jungle before I cut it. Suckler cows need to be fed too when there's calves sucking them and rough silage doesn't work. Cows were starting to loose condition.

Hopefully I'll get the silage fields grazed by mid April then it'll be a coat of slurry, a 1/2 bag of CAN and a long wait for silage!!

I think about 2500g /acre is the minimum. I find it hard to do any less a you end up with a patchy cover of silage.

yes it needs at least 40/50 units of CAN but I only will have 14 units (half a bag). I know its not enough but I'll be robbing the buffer fertility out of the ground for this year. But that's not sustainable going forward.

You will use up that 14 units in one good week in May. I know fertilizer is a crazy price. My opinion is don't let the best grass growing month of the year go by without using it. My land here is light and very dry but we can get stock out early. If a dry summer comes it kills us, so we need to get a decent first cut. Your ground maybe different and not as affected in dry conditions.

Let a ball of them out this morning, all onto silage ground now until the end of April. Just hoping the weather holds, looks like the next 14 days are going to be dry so I'll then have stolen another 2 weeks from the winter. I'm going to hold the rest of the hay and silage for next winter. I'm on a low enough stocking density as a ran a few culls over the winter and also a few cows that were not performing.

There's a great cover of grass in fairness thanks to the mild winter. No fertilizer yet, might get away with just slurry for the first cut.

How likely is it that the current good cattle trade will come to a halt in the backend? In the west of Ireland which has alot of low input suckler farmers these are not going to put out their bit of fertilizer so therefore their crop will be down. If they do decide to make silage it could cost over €20 a bale and some may not bother at that price and not winter cattle especially when meal is added to the equation. Cull cows are probably the most likely to get the road, especially empty cows followed by weinling and store cattle.

What do people reckon it will cost to keep a bullock this year, say if they continued to farm as other years.

You'd have to think 500 a head might not be too far off.