Direct drilling under way at Chipping in Late August, making the most of the better weather,

This is into a tired grass ley , drilling in new Tetraploids and Hybrid Grass Varieties, to improve next years performance.

Agscope Exhibit at Garstang Show, Along with Townson Tractors and Greenmaster

Hot weather – think water supply to cows , they could drink 140-160 litres a day , so make sure the supply is good, especially after milking

Grass Growth update 27-6-14

An Excellent 2nd Cut Tantallon Grass being mown on the 17th June, this was direct drilled last Sept (13)

Grass hits a average of 100 kg/Dm /Day

This is the grass growth curve for a number of Dairy units in the Lancashire/Cumbria

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

 With grass growth hitting the 33kg/dm/day mark this week , we have seen some dairy cows out during the day time, grass quality is obviously variable at present but we do know that the protein levels are around the 24-26 % mark.

Good cow tracks are key to early grazing they allow fields to be grazed with good covers earlier in the spring and later in the autumn , tracks are never a investment that is regretted

Treating whole crop wheat can often be interesting to say the least, but I used some EM Silage additive on a very dry whole crop (you could nearly of had the combine in), the results have been very impressive because there has been very little wastage and heating on the clamp face.

Plate metres are out covers have dropped off over the last week by approximately 100 kg/DM/Ha, but some covers are running at approx. 2000 kg/DM/Ha, we did not get grass covers like this until Mid April last year.

Soil temps running at 5-7 degrees (daytime)