The story of the year for grass growth has been a country split in two, and this trend continues into the back-end.

The dry soils and lack of rain has slowed down grass growth in the south and east of the country, whereas grass growth in the west and north of the country has been steadily good.

The rain over the last week has mainly hit the west and north of the country, at a time where they could do with less rain whereas the south and east got lighter showers at a time where those farmers needed the heavier showers.

For heavier farms, these constant showers, particularly in the west and north of the country, may make it difficult to manage if conditions start to deteriorate and need to try and hold the rotation to 30 days.

Whereas farms who are struggling with grass growth will be aiming to reduce demand through supplementation or removing non-milking stock and to stretch the rotation length to build covers.

The next two to three weeks will be the best time to build covers as, towards the end of September, grass growth will take a nose-dive and it will be a struggle to build reasonable covers if they have not already been built up.

Average grass growth across the country was 47kg dry matter (DM)/ha/day, but this is not a fair reflection.

Grass growth in the west of the country typically ranged from 60kgDM/ha/day to 87kg DM/ha/day. It was the lows of the south and east bringing down the average.

According to PastureBase Ireland, over 80% of farms are currently behind their autumn grazing target and action must be taken to address the deficit.

For these farmers, the aim should be to extend the grazing rotation for as long as possible as a 30-day rotation, allocating one-thirtieth of the grazing area each day is not going to recover covers in the next number of weeks.

Instead, until growth picks up again - and with more moisture in the soil, it hopefully will - aiming to allocate one-fortieth for these farms is advisable.

If grass growth is below 30kg DM/ha /day, then allocating one-fiftieth of the platform should be the aim.

These farmers should re-introduce the strip wire to accurately allocate one-fortieth to one-fiftieth of the farm each day.

Feeding silage will replace more grass in the diet than meal. If a 100-cow herd are grazing 1,200kg DM/ha covers - then these cows will be eating 12kg of DM grass each. With a daily intake of 18-19kg DM/day, then 6-7kg of DM is going to have to be made up of meal and silage.

Remember that cows will eat 5-6 kg DM grass in 3-4 hours, so one option is for cows to be fed for a few hours after morning milking and a few hours before evening milking to reach their required dry matter intake. Ensure there is enough feed space at feed barriers.

These farms should also consider removing surplus stock and/ or cull animals off the farm and make all grazing area available to the herd.

Farmers need to keep up with their fertiliser applications, remembering that the last day to spread nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) is September 14, and if you still have an allowance to spread it, farmers should be aiming to get out 20-30 unit of N/acre in September.

When spreading fertiliser at this time of the year, the value of spreading extra N at this time of year is lower, as risk to N losses in the autumn is higher.

No doubt, fertiliser in the last week to 10 days of the spreading period is going to play a role in recovering growth and covers, but bear this in mind, as every unit of N is only as good as what the soil can uptake and utilise.

For farmers who are experiencing high levels of rainfall and growth rates are continuously strong and covers are getting difficult to manage, holding a 30-day rotation needs to be prioritised.

Keeping quality grass ahead of the cows is the priority and the aim should be to go into covers of 1,500-1,600kg DM/ha at this time of the year, while reducing meal to hold the rotation at about 30 days.

These farmers should also be implementing 12-hour strip wire allocations to allocate the correct amount of grass and ensure quality graze outs while slowing up the rotation.

Conditions on these farm may become increasingly more difficult with more rain to come, so ensuring that a strip wire is in place will also reduce damage. A back fence and spur roadways may need to be re-implemented if conditions deteriorate further.