Sean Moher – November 2024

Signpost: TB testing didn’t bring the news we wanted, but we’ll manage

The last two paddocks to be closed will be the multi-species paddocks.

Conditions are fairly good here as we are coming close to the end of the grazing season. All stock are still out, and we have no plans to house anything soon. 

We like to have over 85% of the platform closed for the first of November as we find it hard to grow any more than 200kg of grass over the winter months. This has always been the case even before we started reducing fertiliser and using clover in the paddocks.

This has always been the case even before we started reducing fertiliser and using clover in the paddocks.

The last two paddocks to be closed will be the multi species paddocks. As the leaves on the herbs can shade clover over the winter months, which is not good for clover. The clover in the sward is more noticeable than at any other grazing. It’s now 50 days since grazing. It’s recommended to extend rotation for clover stolen development at the back end of the year.

When measuring multi species grass we use a dry matter percentage, 3 points below a grass sward. A low dry matter would be one of the contributors to bloat, along with lack of fibre and hungry cows. So obviously this is a high risk period.

We will graze this by day only, this should hopefully eliminate any bloat risks. So far these reseeded paddocks have grown nearly 7 ton with 116kgN/ha. I would expect to use less nitrogen next year. 

There has been a lot of talk in the press this year about the effectiveness of protected urea. We’ve been using it now for a few years and the only issue in particular this year was that it doesn’t spread as wide as other fertilisers and so spreading width has to be a bit closer, even still we find some skips, I’m guessing the wind and spreading height are more critical.

So far growth is back 1.5ton year to date, this seems to be the norm for everyone this year. Everyone is blaming the north-western wind that blew for most of the summer. I went to a lot of matches over the summer and every night we were talking about how cold it was.

We had our first reactor in a TB test in over 25 years lately. Two cows went down one was in her ninth lactation and the other in her first. I knew we were riding our luck as it’s quite common around these parts, usually in small numbers so hopefully we’ll get over it soon. If all goes well for us and we have no more reactors we will have most of the cows calved next spring before we get clear again.

We must put in some extra accommodation for calves before the spring. There is room in a corner of the hay barn, it shouldn’t take too much work. For now I’m going to be positive and say that with a bit better organisation, 30 or 40 extra calves will be manageable. I hope!!

This article was first published in the Irish Examiner.