The grazing season

That looks quite solid yet Nashmach ?

It is podge but it is one of the driest fields here and the meal trough is moved each feed.

Also it was taken on Sunday evening before the latest deluge came along, how it looks today I don't know :sweat:
 
Removing the last stripwire of 2018 yesterday evening.
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Today marked the end here with everything housed now.

A full two weeks later than last year.
 
Ah now Nash, please tell me the stuff on the right you don't consider an acceptable residual??? I'd be putting heifers or something back out onto that for another week or so!
 
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And on the grazing season, despite 8 inches of rain over the last week, ground conditions still unbelievably good still, about 20ac still to graze here, cows on a fair whack of maize and the aim is to keep them fulltime outside at least another week, if conditions still OK in a week I'll start jsut giving them an ac a day to save having to house for as long as possible.
 
Ah now Nash, please tell me the stuff on the right you don't consider an acceptable residual??? I'd be putting heifers or something back out onto that for another week or so!

I don't but there were meal troughs there during the drought so It must be sour. If you went two stakes over It was eaten clean down.

They were going In today anyway due to weather and labour.

Only big cattle here at the moment but If we had a few light lads they'd get a few days there but it's getting sticky now.

Shouldnt residuals be over the whole paddock anyway :scratchhead: (I knew Well someone would comment on That!)
 
Ha sorry I'm bursting your bubble there I know, as you said 2wks later than last yr is good defo. However I still would be very slow about leaving a residual as such over the winter there, you'll end up with a dead mat of grass which will hinder regrowth the whole way through the spring, and basically until the next time you mow that field. Or you could let sheep graze it if that's an option (it's the absolutely last option for me here hahah)

Actually I've the perfect solution here, I'll send down 35 maiden calves here to graze out anything you got left for the next few weeks hahah, I'm still tight as fook for winter feed.
 
Ha sorry I'm bursting your bubble there I know, as you said 2wks later than last yr is good defo. However I still would be very slow about leaving a residual as such over the winter there, you'll end up with a dead mat of grass which will hinder regrowth the whole way through the spring, and basically until the next time you mow that field. Or you could let sheep graze it if that's an option (it's the absolutely last option for me here hahah)

Actually I've the perfect solution here, I'll send down 35 maiden calves here to graze out anything you got left for the next few weeks hahah, I'm still tight as fook for winter feed.

Ah I'm not worried about it at all, that area is no more than 20ft by 10ft. There's usually a few escapee sheep around in the winter so I'm sure it will solve that. It will be the second/third field to be grazed in the spring and will be eaten clean down with less fussy stock than finishers.
 
Cows still out day and night. Housed 20 of the spring born calves on Friday. Cows milking well and happy out. Never out this long before here. Every day and night out is a massive bonus
 
I'd say ye don't get as much rain there Nashmach as us down here in cork ?
The ground is fair sound under that zero grazer class grass ..
 
Over 200m recorded in Arklow since start of Nov! Enough to make absolute slop of the place in any normal year, but the ground still rock hard after it here!
 
Yesterday . They are on slats today .
I got great value from strip grazing grass on several occasions this year.

Over The Line

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Where's the one that was wandering :laugh:

How would lads rate the grazing season in general? I must say we learned more positive lessons this year than other.

Best investment by a long shot was a couple of hundred metres of polywire and about 40 plastic stakes. Ended up with the farm all divided up in paddocks of no more than 2 acres, utilization was superb at all times no doubt helped by the weather.

One of the other best decisions was cutting nearly 20% of the grazing area on June bank holiday weekend as strong paddocks. Really tidied up the farm. We were sorry we didnt take out more and lesson learned! Honestly say we won't cut anymore dedicated second cut silage here again.

Never did so little damage in the backend and the farm is eaten reasonably clean too.

Biggest downer was the late turnout. Usually we'd have yearlings out on March 17th and sometimes in late February. I'd have to check my diary here but it was April 25th or so this year :tdown:

If we had some rain in June/July and a drier March , I'd take this year again any time from the grazing side.
 
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