Brian Reidy: Are you getting optimum animal performance from grass right now?
Dairy herds in many areas have seen marked declines in milk yield well beyond normal yield curve reductions, writes independent ruminant nutritionist Brian Reidy.
Every year brings its own challenges and thankfully the recent dry spell has been broken by a good drop of rain for most parts of the country.Â
Grass is becoming so difficult to manage at the moment. Keeping quality grass in front of stock is becoming a hard task. Dry Matters in the warm weather were much higher than they would normally be for May and this was throwing a lot of herds off with their grass budget. Many were going into much heavier covers than they thought as Dry Matters were 21-22% when 18% was being used to do the budget.Â
The comment from anyone measuring last week was that there was too much grass at the top of the wedge and nowhere near enough at the middle or end of the wedge. This lead to many grazing swards which were too strong to optimise intake and performance.
These strong swards are much lower in protein than good May grass should be. As much as 5% to 6% protein below normal, which can explain all of the low milk proteins. The lower proteins and stronger grass have depressed overall intakes, hitting milk yield and butter fat too. If performance has dropped off in dairy herds, then it will have done in beef herds too, even if it is not as easy to quantify.
Establishing the suitable grass quality for different groups of stock on farm is critical to animal performance. Plenty of experienced dairy farmers who are running a strict grassland management programme for years are finding the going tough when trying to get grass right for cows in the recent warm and dry conditions.Â
The rain we have just had will give a good quality problem in the form of a significant acceleration in growth. Identifying a surplus and taking it out in May/June is critical to maintaining feed quality and animal performance.
Most will have a grass surplus fairly quickly after the recent rain; some however won’t realise that the surplus exists on their farm. At this time of year, when growth accelerates, we really must walk our farms twice per week to keep an eye on growth rates and sward quality.Â
Grass quality is the number one influence on animal performance at this time of year. It is, however, easier to identify the consequences of grazing unsuitable swards on a dairy farm as measurements of performance are in the tank volume daily along with milk quality tests received by text.Â
So how does the beef producer measure his animal’s performance? Apart from regular weighing, which is not easily done on many units, measurement of thrive on grass can be very subjective.
How can we get a handle on possible performance drop-off? As I mentioned above, dairy herds in many areas have seen marked declines in milk yield well beyond normal yield curve reductions. This has been combined in many cases with a drop off in milk protein and butter fat.Â
All of these indicate that cows have not been consuming sufficient volume of Dry Matter of appropriate energy density to maintain performance. Grass intakes decline as quality/digestibility declines. As grass DMD diminishes, so too does the intake of the grass, resulting in lower total energy intakes and ultimately a decline in animal performance.
What I am saying is that if you know dairy producers that are grazing stronger than ideal grass swards, and their herd performance has declined by more than acceptable levels and your grass is similar, then it is likely that your beef cattle are not performing to their optimum level either.
- Stock will tend to do much more walking between bites of grass, looking for the nicer bite.
- The tops of the grass will all be eaten, with a lot of stems remaining uneaten.
- They will have poor rumen fill. The space between the last rib and the hip bone on the left-hand side will be hollow.
- They tend to be more agitated, and once you appear to herd them, you will hear plenty of noise from them!
- They will be more likely to try to break out of the strong paddocks. As a simple rule of thumb, paddocks that have just been grazed should still be green. If it is all yellow when animals leave the field, it was too strong to graze in the first place.
- Monitor intake regularly. Don’t be slow about introducing forage if grass intakes are poor while grazing heavy covers or if grass is scarce.
- Act quickly if you see significant drops in yield, protein, butter fat, lactose or urea.
- Alternate heavy covers and lighter covers day and night.
- Consider pre-mowing swards that are slightly strong.
- Consider increasing protein supplementation!
- Milk price is strong; feeding extra concentrates will pay.
- Keep beef and replacement stock on the best quality grass possible and move them regularly to fresh swards.
- If your grass quality is poor and you need to take out a significant area of your farm for bales to get quality back into the system, then you will need to supplement stock for a while until grass returns.
- If you don’t feed cattle during a period of energy deficit, it will be very hard for them to catch up to targets.
- If your grass quality is poor, then you need to address it immediately when weather conditions allow.
- Take out surplus grass in rotation when it is due to be grazed.
- Don’t reduce fertiliser use for your rotation length - allow grass to grow when it will grow.Â
- Don’t hold back several fields/paddocks for wrapping on the one day as they will all be ready for grazing at the same time in the next rotation, leading to another surplus.
- If you regularly need to take out surplus paddocks, keep nitrogen application at one unit per day- this will ensure that preservation is successfully achieved in both bales and pit saved.
