Unsurprisingly, more than 50% of dairy farms across the country have less than 10% of the farm grazed as places remain saturated.

The majority of these herds have not seen any grass in the diet yet, given how wet the spring has been.

But thankfully, the days are getting longer and the forecast is expected to dry up. Even if the unsettled weather persists, rainfall levels will hopefully be less severe.

Grazing outlook

According to PastureBase Ireland, 51% of farms have less than 10% of grass grazed as of mid-week this week; 20% of farms have got through 11-30% of the platform; while 29% have managed to get more than 30% of the farm grazed.

Considering the driest of farms are only just passing the 30% mark now shows how challenging conditions are across the entirety of the country, as these farms would usually be aiming for 60% grazed by St. Patrick's Day.

This year, dry farms like these will be targeting to have 60% of the platform grazed by the end of March, which may still be a push considering farms are continuing to operate on-off grazing systems.

Wetter farms will be targeting to get 30% grazed by the end of the month, which will need some seriously strict management and high levels of optimism to achieve.

Meanwhile, farms that are only starting to see grass this week will be targeting to have 30% grazed a week later again.

This may seem optimistic for farms that have yet to get to grass, but considering that the majority of the herd will have calved down at this stage, grass will not be long disappearing once the herd is out.

Grass growth

Grass growth continues to fluctuate week in week out, but sat at 14kg/DM/ha at the beginning of this week, and is expected to reach levels up to 30kg/DM/ha in places next week.

Meanwhile, dry matter % is varying by the day, getting up as far as 22% on dry afternoons.

This has resulted in an average farm cover of 895kg dry matter (DM)/ha across the country.

Despite plenty of grass available, once cows start moving they will plough through it awfully quick as their diets reach maximum intake.

Therefore, farmers should be aiming to get 60 units of nitrogen/acre out by this time next month, while also ensuring fertiliser is allocated from your allowance and spread on silage ground as soon as possible.

As long as you can travel the land, protected urea can be spread even with showers predicted, so long as there is no heavy rain forecast within a couple of days post-spreading.

Once cows are out and grazing through grass quickly, farmers should be drawing up and following a grass budget and spring rotation planner to ensure they do not get tight on grass in April.