Signpost: Strong grass growth keeps cows out full-time in October

Dermot Walsh: 'I was tempted to bring the cows in for silage because I was afraid they were going to do too much poaching.'

I completed a farm walk about ten days ago. I have an average farm cover of 1,105kg DM/ha and 384kg DM/LU. I have a growth of 64kg DM/ha/day and a demand of 46kg DM/ha/day. I was delighted with the farm walk as it has allowed me to keep cows at grass full-time without having to supplement with silage.

I am in a very strong position with grass at the moment. I am putting this down to getting the last of my silage bales made back in August. It has allowed me to build covers from the beginning of September. I am currently stocked at 2.88 LU/ha.

Cows are currently milking 16.2 litres per day at 4.8% fat and 4.14% protein, which is 1.49kg milk solids per cow. Cows are receiving 16kg of grass and 4kg of meal in the parlour.

We are also emptying all of our slurry tanks this week while it is dry and before the slurry spreading deadline next week. I was up to date with nitrogen application all year. I have K in the yard, ready to spread. This will be spread in the next week or two when conditions allow. 

I will go back and check my soil samples, and any paddock that is low for index potassium will receive a bag of 0-0-50. I am all up to date with lime. If the weather stays dry for the next month, then I am prepared to spread another bit of lime. I might go with a half-tonne to the acre

Last week we had a desperate amount of rain. I was tempted to bring the cows in for silage because I was afraid they were going to do too much poaching. Thankfully, it has dried up in the last few days and the ground has firmed up again. 

My plan has been to keep cows outside for as long as I can to maximise clean-outs. If I had started including silage in the diet last week, then clean-outs would have been nowhere near good enough.

I mowed down my paddock of red clover silage on Tuesday. I hope to leave it down for 24–48 hours. I am expecting this paddock to yield somewhere between four to five bales to the acre. 

I hope to give this paddock about 2,500 gallons to the acre of watery slurry. I also hope to give this paddock half a bag of straight potassium.

We hope to vaccinate the cows and the heifers for salmonella in the next few days. We scanned the cows through the milk recording about two weeks ago. We have about 11% empty in the herd. 

I would have liked for it to be a bit lower, but it has been higher before, so we can’t complain too much. I hope to milk these cows on until around Christmas and cull them when I dry off the last of the herd.

• Dermot and Linda Walsh are farming in Lislevane, Bandon, with their children Tadgh, Aoife, Maebh and Eoin. They milk 84 cows supplying Barryroe Co-op.