Your Weekly Grass10 Update

0:00Hello everyone, John Mar here and this is your weekly grass 10 days under Daryage. While grazing conditions still remain challenging and dry days are scarce, it's supposed to have more positive notes, grass growth is above average at about 15 or 20 kilograms per hectare per day for the last week or so. And for the pelax that have got graze, recoveries, even way harder than that's obvious from the figures and obviously what you see out at farm level for those who have got some grazing done. The grass supply story is also good, I suppose, some ways by default with figures on average at about 900 kilograms of trim at her per hectare, there is a variation within that there are those who have lots of grass and those maybe that don't have as much. It's probably unusual for me to say at this point that what they're grazing has happened or not or has taken place, the average farm cover is around the same, it's very very similar. So, I suppose on that, most farms have raised very very little at this stage, which means

1:06that there will be, I suppose, a lot more monitoring and planning required now. What to do with soil is ground, you know, when to start second rotation, this is all going to get a lot more crammed and mix life a little bit more tricky to deal with. I suppose having information to make those decisions will help a lot by walking the farm, but for those who have a bit of grazing done in general, it means that the second rotation would broadly start somewhere about mid-April. To go back to our friends who have learned all grazing done, you're now entering what you call a late turnout scenario. And what happens here in April is that things happen a lot quicker than normal, everyone gets condensed and the timing and planning at the start of second rotation becomes a lot more tricky. So, anyway, again, back to my point about walking the farm to try and get information on where you are on that, where the recovery is at, when it comes to that position. Anyway, we've a bit to go to that point, yes, I suppose, the week ahead, in terms of

2:08grass road predictions, we're all hit a little bit closer to normal, given that it's slightly colder weather, but, you know, growth has been good, I suppose, it's a point to go to make. Dremel has a running around 60%, or 16% sorry, can be a little higher on the windier days and a little bit lower on the wet days, speaking of rainfall, that's not stopping anytime soon and a schedule to be a lot higher on the western seaboard for the week that we have next week looks to be continuing to be on settle. So, there are challenges there around grazing, and all this means that grazing conditions will be, you know, tricky, it requires them for those who are grazing to use an kind of an on-off approach, and that will still be the main approach needed, which takes a bit of planning and requires flexibility, you know, you just need to be well organized in terms of the yard, and well organized to get the animals out, and well organized to get the animals in quickly. Some land is just too wet, and that has to be accepted, and your dealing with difficult conditions and maybe grazing can't take place, but though, I would say that walking

3:11the farm might just surprise some in terms of where they could maybe get grazing done, right? There are some dry farms who are going for even a second part of grazing in the evening time, and I suppose that's not easily known, that's easy to be done, that takes a bit of planning as well, if the animals are coming in darkness, then, you know, they need to be at a place close to a roadway to get them in, right? There are scenarios though where, you know, grazing may be more of a priority than normal, because there is a low level of silage available, or the silage quality is poor, the farmers are very high feed demand, and I know, in some cases, shed space is tight, so I suppose grass tend have featured some farmers on video, and in the newsletter who have described how they go about doing on-off grazing, and I will come to Mike to submit our feature farmer in a minute about that. On the fertilizer front then, that story is not straightforward either, due to the consistent rainfall, having fertilizer in the yard is a very, very good start, where conditions

4:16do allow, and there will be opportunities now, for a fertilizer and a story application, but you have to see if you're ready for them. I suppose we're talking about three quarters of a bag of protected jury, or 2035 units, for those who have got a bit of a story of a fertilizer out, I suppose the target's fairly popular about 16 years per acre, for those who have not been done, that will be a lot less than that. In relation to the silage ground then, some of it may not get raised, and the decisions will need to be made around fertilizer and slurry application, and that is not straightforward either, given that we're on the 13th to March, right? I know some are splitting the fertilizer in the silage area, and may graze, I mean, not graze, that has to be taught about, but you'd expect somewhere along the way, there are some dry days, maybe, and the things will improve as we go further into March, and they then get a little bit longer, that there will be opportunities that present for a slurry or fertilizer application, and I suppose that those times the farmer has to already take advantage of those opportunities, which is easier said and done. I suppose we'll come to a point now in the middle of March, where applying slurry to grazing

5:19ground needs careful consideration. It's fine if it's watery and at lower volumes, but heavy coatings of slurry on grazing ground, you may see the next rotation, which you don't want to be doing now, to be honest. So watery slurry at, maybe, lower volumes on the grazing ground, the best slurry should go to the silage area. There are some people now who had planned to graze the silage ground, and that's not going to happen, and their strategy has to change to more a fertilizer approach in terms of, you know, nitrogen phosphorus and sulfur, and instead of slurry. So, you know, I suppose what I'm basically asking is that farmers take stock of situation where they are, grazing where they are with silage ground, what the plan is, where they will go, where they won't go, and where the story will fit, and where the fertilizer will fit best. If that makes sense, I suppose for people like me, we'd like the slurry to go to low index ground and to the silage ground, but that may not always be possible, just to say that. Right, to move on to our feature farmer, Michael Smith, from Bayes, Jim and stuff from County

6:21Cavern, has an average farm cover of a thousand, which is very, very good, has about ten percent of the farm grazed, which is not bad for that part of the country at all. In actual fact, I'd say, more farmers have less than ten percent grazed at this stage. So look at Michael's scenario then, he's about 38 hectares, about 100 acres, age 8, how's the calf down, 6% calves, out day and night, early on this week, except maybe things are trickier now at this stage, but was on 12 kilos of grass, 5 kilos of meal, wasp, reared to feed silage, if had to go on off grazing, and elements of the equivalent night, which will come to in a minute, currently doing about just under 26 liters at 4.95 and 3.6, brought in, cows are about 6.30 in the morning, and go back to paddock for 8.9 a.m., if conditions change, they're brought in an offered silage, if the conditions are good, they'll go back out in the evening time, the cows are about around 4 p.m., back out at 5.30 p.m., which is important because they're going out in daylight. If conditions allow, they will stay out all night, if they're not, they're brought in at 8.30 p.m., an offered silage.

7:22So this is on off grazing, it hits very, very best, and managing the silage accordingly, if the animals go out full of silage, then the chance of getting lots of grass in are limited, and the risk of damage is also higher, because the animals start walking. So you want them going out with an edge on them as such. Now the farm, T-Fair to Michael, is well-service in terms of roadways and access points, and Michael also uses a lot of temporary sport roadways to get to the back of paddock and stuff like that. Right, so that's important, right? But to quote Michael, no matter how difficult it is to get cows out, it certainly pays that they get great satisfaction from seeing cows move in well. So as we mentioned that for everybody, except some farms are just want to be able to do grazing, but for many, we can, you know, be a bit braver, have a look at this. In terms of fertilization, the story of Michael's ash, some of the platform has got 2.5 thousand gallons of story per acre with the drill bar, the plan is to spread a bit more this week, the fertilizers in the yard, and the plan is to try and get fertilizer out

8:24here in the week. So at about 30 units per acre, but like all this, it's a case of being ready and taking opportunity and doing the best you can in the current circumstances. So that's the story. Hopefully, things will improve a bit better next week when we have better news in terms of weather. But if you'd like to hear more from the grass tens' teams, subscribe to the weekly grass tens' news letter, which is available on the grass tens' page on the chavis public website and the link to this news letter is also available in the description of this podcast. We'd like to thank those who support the grass tens' campaign, AIB Grass and Agro, Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine, FPD and the Farmers Journal. This has been your grass tens' date, and I will talk to you all next week. Hopefully, with the weather, being a bit better.