31 July 2023

Maximising the return from grass in autumn 2023

Stuart Childs, Teagasc Dairy Specialist, highlights the importance of autumn grassland management to maximise the value of your milk, save silage and keep your cost base lower.

Autumn 2023 isn’t really different to any other autumn grazing season. Maximising the return from autumn grass, however, will be important with base milk prices on the slide and also for sparing what could be precious silage stocks on some farms, following a summer of further supplementation.

Different to previous years, the slurry storage period will commence on October 1^st in 2023. Therefore, maximising days at grass will help to reduce the total amount of slurry that has to be stored during the closed period.

Every extra day at grass is important to maximise milk solids production, which will increase milk price received. Every day at grass in the autumn is worth approximately €2/head, so it adds up.

However, this is difficult to achieve if there isn’t a plan to exploit August growth to start building the farm cover, thus ensuring there is grass to carry through October and November.

While there is growth throughout all the months, August is the month when growth exceeds demand, as the day length is still reasonable and there are generally good temperatures (Figure 1).

This allows for the wedge of grass that will carry the farm through to the end of the season to be created. If you miss this boat, the chances are you will get left behind and will end up housing early and feeding the more expensive diet of silage and meal for longer with the knock on effect on milk price and overall returns. All too often, farmers fail to capture the August growth and are left hoping for a miracle.

Figure 1. Grass growth and herd demand curve highlighting the reduction of growth below demand during September

How to build grass?

Essentially, building grass is about growing more grass than you need now so that you can graze it later. Effectively, you need to manage both your supply and demand for grass to build farm cover

Table 1 shows the options available to manage grass supply and grass demand on farms. Effectively, a combination of many of these will help you achieve your targets and the means employed will vary from farm to farm and scenario to scenario.

Table 1: Options to increase grass supply and reduce demand on farms

Weekly measurement and recording on PastureBase Ireland will be an important element of building cover. It is important not to go too high also as this will compromise graze outs and affect regrowth. Where graze out is affected, a butt of grass will carry over to the spring of 2024 and affect graze outs again at that point. Therefore, it is important to manage the peak cover as much as it is to build that cover. Furthermore, grazing of these higher covers can often happen when weather is getting tricky, so keeping control of that peak cover will be the key to success.

Building from a clean base is critically important to autumn grazing, as a clean base allows for heavier covers to be grazed well. Therefore, correction of high residuals needs to take place now be that removing surpluses as bales where appropriate or topping if necessary.

Targets for farms will vary depending on location and soil type. Dry farms can afford to take the cover higher (1,100-1,200kg DM/ha), while heavier farms should build to a maximum of 900kg DM/ha. Infrastructure to maximise autumn grazing is important and will be important for spring grazing also. Read more on infrastructure here.

Plan to have sufficient grass on your farm for the autumn of 2023 so that you will get:

• Maximum value for your milk;
• Keep your costs lower;
• Reduce workload in the yard and spare silage;
• Minimise the amount of slurry being collected that will have to be spread subsequently.

Also read: Get ahead of dairy lameness risks in the coming weeks

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