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.
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.
