Grass growth has returned with the arrival of rain, so now the question for most farmers is how to go about rejuvenating swards on their farms.
The dry weather over the last number of weeks has meant that in some paddocks, a large amount of low-quality grass is present.
To obtain the best production from cows, grass quality needs to be the highest quality possible and feeding of poor-quality pasture should be avoided.
The question then is what is the best way to rejuvenate paddocks and get high-quality grass coming back.
Common options for rejuvenating swards include:
- Take a silage cut in the form of bales from paddocks;
- Top paddocks after grazing;
- Pre-mow and graze the cut material.
Rejuvenating swards
Growth rates have improved significantly in recent days after the arrival of the rain, but many swards have a large amount of stemmy or poor-quality grass present.
The best way to deal with this is to mow and bale, but this cannot happen across the whole milking platform to improve grass quality.
Another option is to top the paddocks, but again this can have a negative impact on future grass growth and decrease overall yield.
Pre-mowing is another option that could be looked at, but this removes the cows’ option to selectively graze and can impact production due to this.
The most suitable option for now is to get cows to graze paddocks.
Although there may be a lot of stemmy grass around there is also a lot of high-quality material. Cows are unlikely to eat the stemmy grass, but if you can get them to hit a good residual on the paddocks this stemmy grass shouldn’t be an issue.
Yes, it will still be in the paddock, but there should be enough quality grass around to keep the cows happy and fed.
Many farms won’t like looking at paddocks that appear to have a lot of stemmy grass, but it may just have to be the case for now.
When growth rates improve further and farms are in surpluses you can target the worst paddocks and reset them by mowing and baling.