In spring flush - plan for the summer dry

In the middle of the spring pasture flush, all your worries about the feed shortages of winter and early spring are long gone. It’s a nice feeling and you can breathe again.

You’ve reached that important landmark in grazing management where feed supply exceeds feed demand. There’s feed in the bank and it feels good! It also looks good when your friends visit with stock belly deep in clean green pasture. It’s what lifestyle farming is all about. You can sit back and relax for a month or two can’t you? Maybe think again and then read on!

You really must start thinking ahead about how you’re going to use the surplus feed in the bank - it’s cost you money to grow, and if you’re going to waste it, then that’s money straight down the drain. You only get one chance each year to “utilise” the feed you’ve grown, and turn it into money either through livestock, or in some form of conservation.

Here are some of the key points. If you’re not sure about any of them - then seek some help.

• Pasture plants (grass and clover) are all in a desperate hurry to produce seed.
• At the seed head stage, they’re low in protein and energy, and high in fibre. This is the opposite to early spring pasture which is ideal feed for stock - ie. rich in nutrients, low in fibre and highly digestible.
• It’s your job to keep pasture plants at the leafy, green “vegetative” stage when stock are well fed and you get value for your inputs.
• Your stock are the best machines to control pasture - use them to eat as much of the spring surplus as possible, and they’ll be turning it into meat, milk and fibre for you.
• The ideal is to offer them plenty and try to get them to graze evenly - leaving no clumps for the next round. You can’t avoid clumps around the dung patches.
• So shorten the grazing round - so they are going round the farm quicker, in say 20 days.
• If pastures are still getting beyond them, then take some out of the grazing round for silage.
• The ideal silage stage is when you can see about 15% of seed heads. With more, then it’s gone too far and should be kept for hay. Note this can happen in a couple of hot muggy days so get your silage contractor organised in good time.
• Making poor quality silage is a real waste of money - you should only make the best.
• Get those silage paddocks back into the grazing round and consider applying some nitrogen fertiliser to get them going again.
• Make plans to have green feed for as long as possible into the summer. Nitrogen in October for example should see feed available into January.
• When the real dry comes in February -then you’ve got that good quality November silage to feed out. Don’t waste that either.
• Topping after grazing will get rid of those long stalks that stock avoid in the next round - BUT don’t get carried away on that tractor!
• If you top too low and it gets dry, you’ll let the sun into the roots of the pasture and the soil will bake. Expect dead stubble with no growth till the autumn rains.
• AND you’ll have provided a great environment for facial eczema spores to grow on.