Thursday, February 09, 2012
A farmer has 30 suckler cows and their calves to turn out, along with all their calves from last year (yearlings).
He is farming in Co Laois on 28 hectares of mostly dry grassland.
The first five hectares for grazing from Feb 10 to Feb 29, is all-year-round grazing ground, close enough to sheds for re-housing if the weather turns very wet. It is also the first area closed up last October — so it has the heaviest covers of grass. He has almost three weeks to graze it, starting with yearlings on Feb 10.
In the first week, he will let half the yearlings out, to see how much area they are likely to graze in a week. However, it is almost inevitable he will have to turn out the other 15 yearlings very soon after, to reach the target of five hectares grazed by March.
As he moves into March, more and more cows will be turned out with their calves to meet March and April targets in the spring rotation planner. If our example farmer grazes a lot of ground quickly in February, he might delay letting the rest of the yearlings out. If he is unlikely to reach his first target even with all yearlings out, he will need to turn out some cows and their calves, or graze lighter covers of grass so that more area per week is being grazed.
Heavy rain or even snow will also force the farmer to adjust the plan.
It is important that grass in place since the previous autumn is well grazed. Some will be dead due to frost damage, and grazing tightly will allow sunlight to the base of the grass, encouraging tillering and sward thickening.
Last spring, swards were grazed to the ideal height of no more than 3.5 cm.
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