Now St Patrick’s Day has passed, it's worth noting that the target is to have over 60% of the farm grazed by now.

Unfortunately, it’s a pretty meaningless target for most dairy farmers this year as the weather has played havoc with grazing plans.

There are many farmers that have less than 5% of the farm grazed per date. Near constant rain has meant that land is just too wet to get cows out to graze.

These farmers are working heavy soils where there is little movement of water down through the soil.

They rely on evapotranspiration for soils to dry out. This is the combination of water removal from the wind and sun plus what the grass plant takes up.

However, with near constant rain these soils are not getting any opportunity to dry out. Free draining land has the benefit of water draining from below and farmers on these type of soils have fared better.

Under pressure

But even farmers on dry land are under pressure now. What they are telling me is that they have most of their drier fields grazed and what is left to graze is wetter paddocks or paddocks with very high covers.

They were banking on the weather being better towards the end of March to graze these higher covers and wetter paddocks. That plan hasn’t worked so far.

As a result, most herds that were out grazing have had to be housed either full-time or part-time over the last few days as farmers try to buy time for land to dry out.

The fact that cows are eating silage is presenting another problem for farmers that are short of silage.

Many farmers are reporting dwindling stocks of silage and farmers that are living along main roads are reporting lots of silage being moved so it’s clearly an issue on many farms.

There are no easy solutions to that problem. If silage has to be fed then it has to bed and if it’s not in the yard then it must be sourced.

Full slurry tanks

Silage can be stretched with straight products like soya hulls or palm kernel and these can be fed to dairy cows, both milkers and dry cows.

They might be an option where silage is hard to source but the cost would need to be compared against buying silage.

Slurry tanks getting full is another problem reported on farms. The essential advice here is to move slurry to different tanks if land is too wet to spread.

If all tanks on the farm are full then consider moving slurry to neighbouring farms if they have spare capacity.

Finally, the situation will change and when it does it’ll change swiftly as we’re getting closer to late spring and early summer.