The mild weather so far in 2017 has resulted in extra grass grown on farms.  There is an opportunity to get cows to utilise this free quality feed.  This will ensure good quality regrowth for April.  It doesn’t matter what livestock system, you can still get cows and some youngstock out for grazing now.

Whilst the various grazing programs have a spring planner to work out how much ground you should graze each day to ensure you have sufficient grass to get through to magic day in April, this doesn’t work particularly well for autumn calving herds and all year round calving herds.  With a spring calving herd at the start of grazing, cow numbers are low so demand is low and small areas can be grazed easily.  With other calving systems all the cows are likely to go out together, so a larger area can be required to avoid poaching and ensure a reasonable quantity of grass is included in the diet.

If you are in this situation, planning how much to graze is relatively easy.  All you need to know is the date of turnout, date of magic day, (normally around 10th April), and area to graze.  For example, turnout 1st March, magic day 10th April, therefore days’ available equals 41.  If you have 100 acres this means you can graze 2.5 acres per day.  The amount of dry matter available from grazing will depend on what you measure in an individual field, but will likely be between 5 and 7 kgs DM/day per cow (50% of their forage).
Those that are grazing cattle now are saying that the grass grazed is growing faster than the ungrazed areas.  This is all free cheap feed and every day a cow is out grazing in spring it is worth on average an extra £350 per day for a 150 cow herd in costs savings and increased animal performance.

If you want assistance to plan how you could be getting this increased profit without losing output, contact Phil at pcooper@fcgagric.com or your local FCG office.