Sean Moher – September 2024

Sean Moher: Fine-tuning a red clover system

The clover content is back a bit this year – most have about 30% to 40% clover – but I’m quite happy with this level as I still get the full benefits.

Last week, we were continuing to enjoy the Mediterranean weather here in Cork. We didn’t get any great flush in growth after last Saturday night’s rain. 

Growth seems to have maxed out at 50kgDM/ha per day, and I expect it to fall back to the 30s fairly soon. So, rather than take another cut of silage, we are zero-grazing the grass, which, in effect, reduces the stocking rate to 2.4 cows/ha.

So, rather than take another cut of silage we are zero-grazing the grass in, which in effect reduces the stocking rate to 2.4 cows/ha. This has put us back on track with regards to target covers for this time of year and gives us the added bonus of extending the rotation of the clover paddocks which is beneficial for stolon development.

The clover content is back a bit this year. Most have about 30% to 40% clover. I’m quite happy with this level as I still get the full benefits. In other years some have gone over 50% clover.

With a high stocking rate on the milking platform thoughts are now turning to closing paddocks. As we have more clover fields year on year, to compensate for the reduced growth during the winter months we start closing the non-clover fields earlier. It used to be the 4th October but now the first of three non-clover fields will be closed from 28th September.

With a large number of cows calved early there’s no issue with graze outs in the spring. They’ll probably be grazed late February or early March. It’s recommended to have lower covers on the clover fields for the winter, so we’ll close them up a bit later.

The multispecies continues to perform well. It got 18 units of a protected urea 18-6-12 product after the last grazing. The cows really skin the ground between the dung patches before they take a nip out of the stronger grass and herbs.

As seems to be the case everywhere the clover in this year’s red clover silage reseed aren’t as dominant as in other years but there’s still plenty there.

This is the third year for the red clover fields. Red clover content has definitely reduced over time, this year at a guess it’s back by maybe 20 to 25% from when it was set. For now it doesn’t seem to be an issue as the white clover makes up for this loss.

One small field has a roadway beside it and the slurry tanker follows the exact same route each time. Red clover seems to hate any machinery traffic. It’s not as noticeable in the other field as the slurry tanker takes different routes each time. There’s definitely a case for using the umbilical slurry system on red clover. I’ve read that it’s a good idea to let the red clover flower at least once in a year. The field was alive with bumblebees and other pollinators this week.

In an earlier article I shared my experience with the AGNAV portal. This brings information from Bord Bia, ICBF, and some inputs from ourselves. With this information the system will tell you your greenhouse gas and ammonia emissions. When you access the portal you can adjust a number of variables on a sliding scale, your use of protected urea, low emission spreading equipment etc. and the system will recalculate the effects these changes have on your total emissions. This is useful as you know what actions are going to work for your farm.

As any business will tell you, you can’t reduce something without first measuring it. In the latest model we were also able to calculate our nutrient surplus, which can be an indicator of nutrients loss risk. In our case we were 102kgN/ha surplus which is below the national average of 158kgN/ha.

To access AGNAV you first need to sign up for the Teagasc Signpost Advisory Program (which is free) and, with the current debate on derogation, this will be a very useful tool.