Greenfield Farm manager David Fogarty co-ordinated his first reseeding operation on this farm on 9.5ac of some of the blacker ground down by the motorway in the last few days.

This paddock was sprayed off in late February and got lime in the last week. It got a run of a grubber, then two runs of a disc before the one-pass dropped in the seed on Friday.

One grass variety called Meiduno, a Tetraploid with a PPI of 194, and 1.5kg per acre of Iona clover, a medium leaf clover, were sown down.

Stones

Previous to this, the paddock was sown down to Tyrella in late 2009. There were plenty of stones to be picked and the seeds were rolled in with the flat roller.

To date in March, almost 167,000l have been delivered and for the same period last year the volume was about 142,000l.

At the moment, there are 257 cows going into the tank and David estimates that the herd is averaging about 25.5l (2.1kg MS/cow). A few cows with high cell count are not going in.

Protein

The last protein (29 March) was 3.48% protein and 4.56% fat. The last somatic cell count was 204,000 cells/ml. The herd is getting just short of 3kg per cow of nuts in the parlour and plenty of grass.

The last grass cover (25 March) showed a growth rate of 23kg per day and a farm cover of 867kg. The second round hasn’t started yet and there is a cover of about 800kg on the first paddocks grazed in early February. The cows are going into covers of about 1,800kg.

Surplus heifer calves are being prepared for sale. There are about 40 well-bred AI heifer calves for sale and a catalogue is being prepared.

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Greenfield Farm: better grazing helps March performance