With underfoot conditions improving rapidly, every farmer should now have stock out and be catching up on their percentage grazed.

The fact that ground is dry also offers a great chance to focus on grazing residuals. Achieving a residual of 4cm in your first rotation will set the farm up for the year by helping to generate a better-quality sward for subsequent rotations. We need to train stock to do this, with the most important fact being to get your grass allocations right.

This is going to involve a certain amount of trial and error but you can apply some quick maths. Start by calculating the total kg of liveweight in your grazing group and multiply by 2% to get the group’s daily grass demand in kg DM. Then, by measuring an area before grazing and dividing the total grass DM available by the daily grass demand of the group, you will know how many days’ worth of grass is in your paddock or field. Then use temporary reels and pigtails to divide it up accordingly.

One grazing

For the dairy farmer in the first rotation, aim to give the cow enough grass for just one grazing. On drystock farms, stretch it out to 48-hour grazings. If you get it wrong, offer a much smaller allocation of fresh grass for the following grazing and allow them to go back over the previous allocation to clean it off. Giving cows a fresh bite of grass every grazing helps keep them settled and, once they have that grazed, they will generally go back and graze the grass left behind in previous allocation to fill up.