Cold snap triggers an early grass headache

A COLDISH snap in the mid-Spring weather has stunted grass growth and prompted many farmers to dip into reserves of silage, according to a Teagasc Dairy Specialist.

With soil temperatures dipping down to the no growth point of 6° Celsius over the past fortnight, Teagasc are reporting zero grass growth in many parts of the country on a number of days.

The grazing situation has also been further worsened by the heavy downpours of the past two weekends that has left many fields on farms at saturation level again.

Teagasc Dairy Specialist George Ramsbottom said that due to grass shortages, many dairy farmers were being forced to supplement their herd’s diet with silage and meal to try and maintain milk solids resulting in costs being driven up.

Varied grass regrowth levels have been recorded in parts of the country, with Teagasc’s PastureBase showing an average grass growth rate of 15kg dry matter per hectare per day (kg dm/ha) on both Teagasc dairy research and commercial farms.

“Typically it would be expected to see growth rates of almost double this at 25-30kg DM/ha per day in late March so that’s half of what we’d normally expect.

“The reason for such low growth rates is the low temperatures – a key driver of grass growth in early Spring. Currently temperatures [soil] are averaging 7ºC on farms which is almost 2ºC lower than normal.”

“At this stage we should be seeing grass covers on the first grazed paddocks of 1200kg DM/ha. In most cases we have only seen half of that, at 500-600kg DM/ha.

“Our advice to farmers is to keep Nitrogen spread in line with their annual fertiliser plan, and continue to supplement, while they wait for grass growth to catch up,” said George Ramsbottom.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.