In terms of grass growth, it’s been another good week for most. The national average is currently 62kg DM/ha/day with minimal regional variation from an average of 57kg in the east to 64kg in the west. These growth figures certainly don’t echo signs of a turn in the year. However, the weather conditions over the last week or 10 days do.

For the last seven days, accumulated rainfall was as high as 66mm in the east and 60mm in the south. That’s 400% and 300% above average respectively. The west has had less rain, but more than enough considering the heavier soil type.

The result? For the minute, it seems that most moderate to well-drained soils are soaking the rain quite well but they are reaching the limit. Heavier soils are past the limit and are at risk of poaching.

What this means is that if grazing is not managed carefully in these wet conditions, poor grass utilisation and poaching can very quickly deplete a lot of the hard-earned grass covers over the last month. The key principle of wet weather grazing is to keep stock settled.

To keep stock settled, you have to keep them full, and that means feeding them every day with fresh grass. It’s extra labour, but grazing sections of a field or paddock daily will significantly increase utilisation and limit ground damage because cattle won’t travel.

Building

Carefully manging grazing in these wet conditions is very important – we are at the time of the year when we need to be building the farm cover, not depleting it. Building grass should start now and climb towards a peak cover of around 1,100kg DM/ha (farm stocked at 2.5LU/ha) in mid-September.

The rotation length should now be pushed out to at least 25 to 30 days. This means that paddocks are only going to be grazed twice more before closing.

It’s time to decide on your autumn fertiliser plan. The options are an application after grazing for the rest of the month, or a blanket application at some stage before 15 September. I’d be inclined to go with the latter option, in 10 days to two weeks’ time. Between 25 and 30 units N/ac would be a good dressing.