Effects The Last Year's Starting See On Of Weather To Finishers Year's This

Starting to see the effects of last year's weather on this year's finishers — Linehan His Co Picture On Meter Limerick Dan Ciaran Bartley At Grass A Caherconlish, Farm Using

Wed, 24 Jul, 2024 - 10:59

Ciaran Bartley

The past few weeks have seen my grass growth continue to disappoint despite the fact that all the necessary parts of the jigsaw, in terms of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, have been kept up to date, and soil pH is at the optimum level.

I am continuing to follow each grazing with 30 units of Nitrogen in the form of NBPT Protected Urea. Slurry is almost all spread except for approximately 30,000 gallons which I have kept to follow on the red clover silage ground once I take the first cut off it.

Last week, I grew 28kg/ha/day, which is extremely low for the time of year, and I have 14 days of grass ahead where I normally am taking out surpluses, but I have noticed an improvement in growth over the past few days.

The crop of red clover silage is coming on well, with a very high clover content. Weeds seem to be dying away well following a post-emergent spray, and I hope to cut the first crop of bales off it in the next few weeks.

I have begun feeding the heaviest of my Friesian bullocks at grass. Some are still quite light at a little over 420kg, but I will feed them for six weeks at around 3kg a day and assess performance again in early September. If they are, after making up some of the deficit in weight target, I will feed on them to kill them in early November.

The heaviest calves are now off meal and will remain so until September. The lighter calves will be kept on a low level of meal throughout the summer at a rate of around 1kg a day.

Due to poor grass growth this summer and underweight cattle, I am really starting to see the effects of last year's wet weather on the farm. Damaged swards and poor thrive are things we don’t want to experience in the future - and quite frankly can’t afford to.

Silage stocks are not too far off target this year again, with most of my requirements coming from first-cut. I have around 20 acres of second cut to take off soon, and along with a third cut off red clover silage ground, I hope to cut in mid-September.

A dry back end to the year would be as important to me as good growth. While I do have a rising grass demand as the year progresses due to the increased weight of cattle, growth is of little significance to me if ground conditions are unsuitable to utilise grass efficiently.

As bad as growth has been this year, at least the ground is relatively dry this summer, and work can be done in terms of draining, slurry spreading and topping while cattle are able to clean out paddocks efficiently.

For the next month, I plan to reseed another 14-acre field, spread lime and build a bank of grass up for the autumn if grass growth allows.

All in all, if I were to summarise summer 2024, I would say, “It could be better, but it’s still far ahead of 2023 so far”.