Making the best use of grass has been a key driver for south Antrim suckler-beef farmer, Alastair McNeilly, over the past five years.
And the benchmarking figures for the business confirm this.
Alastair recently hosted a visit to his farm by members of the British Grassland Society, where he outlined some of the key achievements on the farm connected to grass growth and use.
The forage area on the farm has been retained at just short of 60 hectares. However, between 2017 and 2021, Alastair managed to improve his stocking rate from 2.0 to 2.78 cow equivalents per hectare.
During the same period, cow numbers increased from 67 to 89 with gross margin per hectare strengthening from £905 to £1,232.
“A combination of growing and utilising more grass has made all of this possible,” he said.
He attributes the development of a paddock-based grazing system as being of fundamental importance in this context.
Paddocks have been designed to provide stock with three days’ grazing, followed by an average 21-day recovery period.
He uses a plate metre, in tandem with the Agri-Food and Biosciences (AFBI) GrassCheck service to asses current and future grass availability across the farm throughout the grazing season.
He has also trialled pre mowing of paddocks as a means of encouraging improved grass utilisation by stock.
“It’s an approach to grassland management that has promise. I only have a mower on the farm, so the option was always going to be that of pre-mowing and not topping after stock had left a particular paddock,” he explained.
Heavy clay/loam soils predominate across the McNeilly farm. Their potential to grow large quantities of high quality grass is significant.
However, during a wet spring or autumn, grazing opportunities can be limited because of unsuitable ground conditions.
Alastair further explained:
“It’s all about matching grass supply and demand. We aim to put the cattle into paddocks with a grass cover of 2,800 to 3,000kg of dry matter per hectare.
“Post-grazing covers are in the region 1,600 to 1,800kg.”
He added:
“Grass growth rates change throughout the year, so we tweak the management of the paddocks accordingly.
“There was a bit of work required to set up the paddocks in the first instance. Installing an adequate number of drinkers was important. But once we got beyond that stage, it hasn’t been that difficult from an overall farm-management perspective.”
A lane has been put down through the farm over a number of years. And, again, this has helped Alastair to manage his overall grazing area more efficiently.
“Moving cattle on in the most effective way possible is very important. But after three to four days in a paddock, the animals will want to access fresh grazing anyway.”
No meals are fed to the cows on the McNeilly farm while at grass. However, they do have access to supplementary dry cow and breeding minerals, when required.