With grass growth hitting rates of 75kg/DM/day in Lancashire, we need to focus on grass management, if we let grass grow too far a head of cows we will struggle to maintain quality during the rest of the grazing year.
Key points
Make sure cows graze down the paddocks to residue of 1500-1700 kg/DM/Ha
Turn cattle into fields of roughly 3000-3200 kg, if they getting towards 4000 kg, then make the decision to take these fields out off the grazing platform for now, and cut this field for silage.
Graze at 3 leaf stage
Consider the dry matter of grass at grazing when it comes too feeding the high yielding cows, they may not be getting the required amount of dry matter
Don’t forget the magnesium levels in the diet.
Grass protein is recording 24-27% at present which is a great driver for milk production from grass.
With soil temperature’s of 10-11 degrees we can see grass growth only going one way at present and that is upwards
