How reseeding supports higher performance

Tom O’Connell, dairy farmer in Inniscarra, near Cork city, and John Maher of Grass10 join Stuart Childs to discuss the importance and management of reseeding on this episode of the Dairy Edge podcast.

A negative for the industry, John first outlines the poor national average figures for the area reseeded annually. Differing from the national average, however, Tom reseeds parts of his grazing platform and silage ground annually. This allows for responsive, productive swards to meet herd demand while he waits for the reseeded ground to slot back into the grazing rotation. Reseeding 10% of the area annually, Tom splits the reseeded area and generally takes the second piece out when he knows the first bit is ready to come back in. This is an insurance policy against having too high a stocking rate with all ground out at the same time.

Tom has also reduced his overall milking platform stocking rate through land acquisition and a slight reduction in cow numbers. Now his stocking rate with reseeded ground out is where his stocking rate was before he took out ground for reseeding in the past. This is making the whole thing easier to tackle as at the higher stocking rate, he could be tight for grass at times and this was adding cost as well as compromising production. For Tom, reseeding is an essential element of each year’s work.

John finishes up by highlighting that people often do a lot of the things right but fail to get the post emergence spraying and early grazing of the sward right. Tom is doing this very well as evidenced by his lack of need to spray for weeds between reseeding events in his paddocks.

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