Northern Ireland’s grass growth in March will be below the long-term average, at 7.2kg of dry matter (DM)/ha/day, according to GrassCheck.
In its first bulletin of 2023, GrassCheck warned that the weather in March so far, and the forecast for the rest of the month, will prove less favourable for grazing.
The grass growth forecaster, which aims to help livestock farmers maximise their returns from grazed grass, said that on-off grazing should be used when conditions allow.
This, it said, would ideally mean turning stock out which have an appetite to graze for two to three hours to low grass covers into square-shaped areas.
It also advised farmers to have a nutrient management plan in place for the coming season.
GrassCheck
The GrassCheck initiative is led by AgriSearch, the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI) and the College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise (CAFRE), and is supported by the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) and the Centre for Innovation Excellence in Livestock (CIEL).
GrassCheck sponsors said the programme enables improved network coverage which will allow conditions across Northern Ireland to be monitored.
AgriSearch will invest £400,000 in GrassCheck over the next few years, it said, adding 15 new farmers to the existing 38 participants.
These new additions were to improve GrassCheck’s coverage across the province but to also allow the programme to incorporate a number of farms with high clover/low-nitrogen swards.
With weather extremes observed in recent years the importance of understanding the variations in growing conditions has never been more important for optimal grassland management, AgriSearch said.
Recent increases in fertiliser and concentrate costs mean that maximising grassland utilisation is a top priority for farmers, as well as the use of high-clover grass swards to mitigate the rising costs.
GrassCheck organisers said the trends in weather and the impact on grassland production and quality was the main topic of conversation at the recent meeting of GrassCheck farmers, which was hosted at AFBI Hillsborough.
Carbon sequestration and growth
GrassCheck also aims to highlight the importance of grassland’s role in the sequestering of carbon.
Work conducted over the past 50 years at AFBI Hillsborough has shown that well-managed grassland can sequester over 800kg of carbon/ha/yr.
Growth in Co. Down has been affected most by the dry weather, according to GrassCheck, and has grown the least grass.
Co. Down has grown 11% less grass than Co. Derry in 2022.
The 2022 season summary shows that GrassCheck plots at Hillsborough and Greenmount produced their joint-lowest crop yield (9.2t DM/ha) since GrassCheck was established in 1999.
The long-term average shown in the data is 11.5t DM/ha.