Strategies to manage low pasture cover

The two main solutions are to grow more grass and to reduce pasture demand. I will cover some basic things to do to manage this situation.

Manage what you measure

You can only manage what you have measured.  If you think you are lower in APC, then measure it now with a full farm walk.  Yes, it is a crazy busy time of the year, but don’t think you have to walk the whole farm in one day.  Do it over 2-4 days if need be. 

Some APC can be quite deceiving with some uneven feed wedges, so the APC cannot be worked out simply by adding your lowest covers with your highest covers and then dividing by two.

Grow more grass

The first principle is stick to your spring rotation planner (SRP).  This is a must.  Do not be tempted to allocate more area than you normally would.  This will only get you deeper into a hole if growth rates stay low.

Nitrogen should be applied from now on as soil temperatures will typically stay above 8 deg C from August onwards.  Apply at 30-35kgN/ha.  You can go back and do half the farm now if APC is low enough, and then follow the cows every 7-10 days.  Best to apply to covers in the 1400-2000 cover range for the best response.

Gibberellic acid can be applied to boost grass growth from now on as most round lengths are now fast enough to get an economic response.  This is best applied 1-5 days post-grazing.  Gibberellic acid will help bring forward pasture growth that would otherwise occur in September and October.  Note that subsequent pasture growth after the first grazing can be reduced.  It is recommended that only one application is used in the spring to reduce the loss of root mass.

Don’t pug paddocks. They can take three years to recover from serious pugging.  In the short term, pugging or light treading damage slows pasture re-growth.  Select paddocks carefully as to what mob goes onto the wettest soils.  The late calving cows are usually the best mob to stand off at night on the yard.

Reduce pasture demand

If you are carrying extra cows that you know are unlikely to become profitable, now is the time to cull them.  If you feel your stocking rate is higher than you can afford going into the season, then you may be better off taking the beef price at present than trying to bring a marginal cow into profit.

Cows are more resilient than we sometimes think.  Cows are not being underfed if you are grazing to 1550, so hit that target and no more.  If you start seeing no clumps left behind in the paddock, then yes, you are likely to be hitting 1400 residuals.  Better to hold cows tighter now, to be able to lift intakes in September.

Feeding supplements is obviously the quickest method to reduce the pasture demand.  But are we going to make money at a payout most likely with a ‘4’ in front of it? PKE is the cheapest form of energy (after nitrogen).  If your cows are grazing below 1500, then we can expect around 7g MS response per MJME fed.

PKE landed on farm and accounting for some feeding and wastage cost will mean this feed is about 35 cents/kgDM.  A $4.00 payout will yield 31 cents back, so a small loss. A $4.50 payout will yield 35 cents, so maybe a breakeven scenario.  But this still may be the best decision to ensure cows do not lose too much weight and get back in-calf for next year.

OAD milking can be a good way to reduce pasture demand, but this is not immediate.  Cows take 4-6 weeks of being milked on OAD in spring to reduce their intake levels.  So you may not reduce your pasture demand, but you slow the rate at which cows lose weight.  Cows at mating need to be ideally BCS4.0+ and in a positive energy balance.

Potential milk losses can be expected on OAD, especially going past three weeks on OAD.  These losses can be reduced by selecting the younger and lower producers.

Take time to assess where you are pasture-wise and work out a plan to overcome the deficit that suits your own farm.

• Darren Sutton is a LIC FarmWise consultant.