They're off.
Left off 15 heifers yesterday. They weight from 365 to 565. Heaviest a Sim, lightest an Frx. They have been gaining about 0.5kgs per day inside on silage and minerals. They went out to a scarfice paddock last Tuesday and ate two bales to yesterday when I left them off to grass. Hope to start feeding them mid April and send them off late May early June. 5 FRx, 2Fr,4HEx, 2AAx, a Chx and a SIx
Anyone here so strip grazing? Do a bit here and it has gone okay this year, the decent weather has helped prevent poaching.
Ground is firm but I can still feel last years poaching underfoot. Will put some sheep on it over winter and hopefully they'll sort it the worst of it.
gone little tight here but will all the slurry out now that should change. No im not overly heavy stocked this back end so maybe il manage without any Fert so
All depends on how heavy you are stocked and how good your ground is. We’ve grass growing across the hedges here.i put out urea last week on some land where we were getting tight on grass. Grass will fly with all the rain, add in the slurry and you’ll have a lot of grass.
got a lot of slurry out over the last few days between my own spreading and spread the meadows aswell. This is all for grazing is it worth spreading some fertilizer on this now aswel or is the slurry enough? Good cattle slurry and pig slurry mixed. About 2000-2500 gals to the acre.
have it started here now too , hopefully it won’t be to bad , but it’s a horrible thing
Notice some lift in grass the past week. Lambs went back a bit as orf went through them. Horrible virus
I find the white clover in particular has skyrocketed this year.
Once a year for topping but in a good year for grass like this year twice, I was away last week for 3 days, when I came back it was like a different farm altogether, I never seen grass growing that well
Got away with once last year but I think it's looking like twice this year
Same here
I usually only top once. Very rare I’d top a field twice in one grazing season
Twice is usually the most I’d go
How many times in the grazing season is a paddock topped? I would assume twice would be sufficient.
Yea, it's all fairly bang on.
I try keep the lime on when needed and farm yard manure where it's wanted during the autumn.
Is all your soil good as in index 3 and 4?
I got fertilizer on before the heat and it just took off.
I'm stocked ok, just need to start replacing the lads that will be leaving.
I'm sure it'll even out.
Are you back on cattle or is growth just really good for you?
A lot of headed out grass in the paddocks, but cattle seem to be grazing away.
I've a few paddocks to take out once the weather settles and second cut silage.
I’m sure the IFJ will be saying grass is flying this week but I’m the same as you. Two neighbours I was talking to said they’re the same as well. The ground is like iron and the few showers here and there aren’t doing much good.
I took out a few extra paddocks for bales 2 weeks ago and I’m short of grass now.
I gave the cows silage yesterday morning and it’ll be another few days before I’m back on track with grass.
Not the end of the world at the same time.
How are lads finding growth the past two weeks? I feel it’s very poor here at the moment compared to 4 or 5 weeks ago, starting to get tight on grass as I took out fields about 3 weeks ago that were gone strong
5cm is the recommended height. Topping gives an even cut whereas cattle if left grazing won’t graze around dung paths but will skin the areas in between.
What about when it comes to topping, how low would you go?
As Dunedin said above definitely don't skin, the shorter the plant the longer it will take to grow back. Skinned grass puts more pressure on the root to bring up minerals and stalls regrowth. I work with 8 paddocks, with a 4 - 5 day per paddock rotation.
In a perfect world all my paddocks would be the same size but obviously they aren't, so a couple of smaller paddocks won't last longer than three days and the bigger paddocks might go to 5 or 6 days but no longer than that. By day 5 or 6 some grasses will already be beginning to regrow. Aim for a minimum of 25 day rest but ideally it should be 30+.
don’t skin it- takes grass to grow grass.
What level of cover do you take them out?. am i best to skin it or leave a bit and move on?. Finding when i graze it tight it struggles a little bit but drought may have affected it too. (Sheep not cows)
At presit might be as high as that to allow covers to be good enough for grazing. Tain will drive on growth so rotations will shorten. Had a bunch of yearling following one finishing bunch and had a bunch of stores in a paddock with silage and two kgs to get covers goid enough for finishing bunch. Priorising finishing cattle to get some of them slaughtered
Out of interest what sort of rotation are you guys running at?. Is 30 days rest optimum?.
Had a fine drop of rain with thunderstorms passing through in North Clare earlier today, with the way the forecast looks it might be the only bit we get for a while.
with the cold night last night fields that had good cover look alot poorer today, it's taking alot of balancing to keep grass ahead of stock at the moment, lads on wetter ground must be in good shape
Depends what's being fed I'd say, some lads want quality and others want quantity.
I was always aiming for around the 12th of May weather dependent, so mine is just about ready to go.
