For this week’s Grass10 grazing management update, John Maher says that we're now entering into higher growth rates and reproductive stage of the perennial ryegrass plant:

· Pre grazing yield must target 1300 - 1400 kg DM/ha on all farms

· This will enable the animals to graze and clean out the sward to 4 cm

· Grass should be green leaf from top to bottom

For fertiliser, when spreading on dry stock farms it is important to include P (if allowance available), K and S, especially on paddocks that may have been damaged on the first rotation.

Meanwhile, the featured farmer is Danny Bermingham, from Doonbeg, Co. Clare.

Read more from this week’s Grass10 newsletter and subscribe for weekly updates at:
https://bit.ly/Grass10-28thApril

For more episodes from the Dairy Edge podcast go to the show page at:

https://www.teagasc.ie/animals/dairy/the-dairy-edge-podcast/

The Dairy Edge is a co-production with LastCastMedia.com

Tom O’Connell, dairy farmer in Inniscarra, near Cork city, and John Maher of Grass10, join Stuart Childs to discuss the importance and management of reseeding.

John first outlines the national figures which are poor in terms of the amount of reseeding taking place each year and this is a negative for the industry.

Tom is the opposite, reseeding every year on both grazing platform and silage ground. Reseeding every year is what Tom says allow him to have the confidence to take out the ground safe knowing he has responsive swards that will grow at sufficient levels to meet herd requirements while he waits for the reseed to slot back in, as evidenced by the performance of the spring 2024 and 2025 reseeds.

Tom splits the 10% so that it isn’t all gone out together and generally takes the 2nd piece out when he knows the first bit is nearly ready to come back in. This as an insurance policy against having too high a stocking rate with all ground out at the same time.

Tom has also reduced his overall milking platform stocking rate through land acquisition and a slight reduction in cow numbers so that now his stocking rate with reseeded ground out is where his stocking rate was before he took out ground for reseeding in the past.

This is making the whole thing easier to tackle as at the higher stocking rate, he could be tight for grass at times and this was adding cost as well as compromising production.

For Tom, reseeding is an essential element of each year’s work.

John finishes up by highlighting that people often do a lot of the things right but fail to get the post emergence spraying and early grazing of the sward right. Tom is doing this very well as evidenced by his lack of need to spray for weeds between reseeding events in his paddocks.

For more episodes from the Dairy Edge podcast go to the show page at:

https://www.teagasc.ie/animals/dairy/the-dairy-edge-podcast/

The Dairy Edge is a co-production with LastCastMedia.com

For this week’s Grass10 grazing management update, John Maher says that 42% of farms are well above target AFC (> 750 kg DM/ha) largely due to challenging grazing conditions.

While each farm is individual, these key rules need to be applied:

- Maximum SR of 4.2 LU/ha

- Minimum AFC of 160 kg DM/LU

Now is also a good time to assess clover content in your paddocks and the aim is to identify paddocks with a good clover content.

The target is 20-25% clover content in April to allow for reductions in chemical N in May/June

Meanwhile, the featured farmer is Tom McEvoy from Ballyragget,Co. Kilkenny.

Read more from this week’s Grass10 newsletter and subscribe for weekly updates at:
https://bit.ly/Grass10-21stApril

For more episodes from the Dairy Edge podcast go to the show page at:

https://www.teagasc.ie/animals/dairy/the-dairy-edge-podcast/

The Dairy Edge is a co-production with LastCastMedia.com