As we move into August the focus on farms switches. Farmers now need to begin the process of building autumn covers.
The management of grass on farms this year has been a challenge, but setting up the farm over the autumn is important.
Building farm covers in autumn is important for a number of reasons, including that it helps extend the grazing season and set up a farm for early spring grazing.
Targets
The stocking rate on a farm will determine the targets for building grass covers for the autumn period.
A farm that is stocked with 3.0 livestock units (LU)/ha by September 1, should be aiming for an average farm cover of 990kg dry matter (DM)/ha.
On a farm with a lower stocking rate of 2.5 LU/ha, the target is an average farm cover of 750kg of DM/ha by September 1.
Cover/LU
(kg of DM/LU)Cover/LU
(kg of DM/LU)Average farm cover
(kg DM/ha)Average farm cover
(kg DM/ha)Rotation length Rotation length Stocking rate 2.5 3.0 2.5 3.0 2.5 3.0 August 1 170 170 435 510 20 20 August 15 200 250 500 750 25 25 September 1 300 330 750 990 30 30
Autumn covers
Building autumn covers will be challenging, especially considering that ground rates have been sluggish at best.
But even when grass growth rates aren’t slow, building covers while maintaining production in cows is a challenge on farms.
Farmers should switch the focus from monitoring the wedge to tracking the budget.
Removing non-milking animals, or the poorer-preforming cows from the milking platform should be the first port of call.
On many farms, silage harvesting will now be completed, so any silage ground that is accessible by the cows should be reintroduced to the milking platform.
This will allow for an increase in rotation length, thus building covers.
If heifers are on land around the parlour, farmers should also look at moving them onto an out-block that may have been used for silage. Another option is to remove cull cows from the herd; these options will decrease the stocking rate and demand on grass.